'Most Luminous Galaxy' In The Universe Has Extreme Turbulence

One of the universe's 'most luminous galaxies' is experiencing violent turbulence, which may reduce its entire supply of star-forming gas. This bright galaxy is a hidden quasar that is located 12.4 billion light-years away. The observations were carried out with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), according to a study. The galaxy was identified as W2246-0526, which has a glowing infrared light that is powerful as 350 trillion suns.

The researchers found that the galaxy's recent activities were connected to its interstellar medium, the gas and dust between the stars. They found that W2246-0526 is a very distant galaxy that is actually ripping itself apart and has a hungry supermassive black hole in its center. This black hole is hidden behind a shield of thick dust, according to the researchers. The galaxy's brightness is powered by a tiny energetic disk of gas that is superheated as it spirals in on the supermassive black hole. The light is then absorbed by surrounding dust, which releases the energy as infrared light.

"These properties make this object a beast in the infrared," Roberto Assef, coauthor of the study and leader of the ALMA team, said in a news release. "The powerful infrared energy emitted by the dust then has a direct and violent impact on the entire galaxy, producing extreme turbulence throughout the interstellar medium."

The turbulent galaxy is a strange type of quasar which is as Hot, Dust-Obscured Galaxies or Hot DOGS, which are quite rare, only 1 in every 3,000 quasars has been detected with WISE in this category. The areas surrounding the black hole are about a 100 times brighter than the rest of the galaxy. This places a significant amount of pressure on the entire galaxy.

"We suspected that this galaxy was in a transformative stage of its life because of the enormous amount of infrared energy discovered with WISE," said Peter Eisenhardt from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. "Now ALMA has shown us that the raging furnace in this galaxy is making the pot boil over."

The findings of this study were published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

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