Figuring out the power of the black hole's outburst

[Judi Lynn]

Michael Calzadilla and colleagues describe a violent black hole outburst that provides new insight into galaxy cluster evolution.

BY
AMIT MALEWAR
DECEMBER 24, 2019



Giant cavities in the X-ray emitting intracluster medium (shown in blue, as observed by NASA's Chandra
X-ray Observatory) have been carved out by a black hole outburst. X-ray data are overlaid on top of
optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope (in red/orange), where the central galaxy that is likely
hosting the culprit supermassive black hole is also visible. Image courtesy of the researchers.

Supermassive black holes gobble up everything around them. Billions of years ago, a black hole spewed out jets of plasma and created two large cavities 180 degrees from each other. The size of cavities helps estimate the energy of an asteroid impact by the size of its crater.

Likewise, using the size of these cavities, Michael Calzadilla, a graduate student at the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research (MKI), figure out the power of the black hole’s outburst.

Calzadilla measured the outburst in galaxy cluster SPT-CLJ0528-5300, or SPT-0528 for short. Along with his coauthors, Calzadilla combined the volume and pressure of the displaced gas with the age of the two cavities. Doing this allowed them to calculate the total energy of the outburst.

At greater than 1,054 joules of energy, a force equivalent to about 1,038 nuclear bombs, this is the most powerful outburst reported in a distant galaxy cluster.

More:
https://www.techexplorist.com/figuring-power-black-hole-outburst/28686/?utm_source=BNA&utm_medium=BNA&utm_campaign=BNA

[captain queeg]

1. 1,054 joules doesn't sound like much, are you missing some scientific notation?

I don’t really know how to do it here myself, but you know, something like to the 10,000th power?

[Wounded Bear]

2. Yeah, that's gotta be a typo...

It's there in the article linked, but I don't buy it.

From https://hypertextbook.com/facts/2002/RaymondTran.shtml on typical car batteries.

DF115: (50 Ah) x (12 V) x (3600 s) = 2,160,000 J
DF180: (85 Ah) x (12 V) x (3600 s) = 3,678,000 J
DF8D: (200 Ah) x (12 V) x (3600 s) = 8,640,000 J

I'm thinking they left out a "G" on that one.

[Igel]

3. Try this.

A Big Mac has 550 Calories, also known as kilocalories. That's over 2,000,000 Joules.

If 1000 J is 1000 nuclear bombs, 1 J per bomb, no wonder Big Macs are so fattening.

[eppur_se_muova]

4. It's 1E54 Joules. See the link in the article --

Discovery of a Powerful >10^61 erg AGN Outburst in the Distant Galaxy Cluster SPT-CLJ0528-5300

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/ab5b07

Yes, one Joule is 10^7 ergs.

Because of the new anti-hacking restrictions following the Election Day hack, DU no longer handles superscripts or subscripts, unfortunately. Also, carats are removed from the title.