Galaxies and Superclusters Quiz

10 Questions

What powers active galaxies?

Supermassive black holes with accretion disks

Which galaxy is heading towards the Milky Way for an inevitable collision?

Andromeda Galaxy

What could trigger black holes to become active in galaxies?

Galactic collisions

What are quasars like 3C273 known for?

Being highly luminous objects

What will likely occur after the Milky Way and Andromeda merge?

Formation of an elliptical galaxy called 'Milkomeda'

What is the typical size of a galaxy cluster?

Millions of light-years

What causes huge elliptical galaxies to form at the center of galaxy clusters?

Collisions between smaller galaxies

What is the Virgo Supercluster a part of?

Laniakea Supercluster

How are superclusters distributed in the Universe?

Along interconnected filaments

What did the Hubble Deep Field observation reveal about galaxies?

Thousands of galaxies in a tiny section of the sky

Study Notes

Galaxies are vast collections of gas, dust, and stars, classified based on shape, behavior, location, and mass.
Quasars like 3C273 are highly luminous objects, emitting over 4 trillion times the energy of the Sun from supermassive black holes in their centers.
Active galaxies are powered by supermassive black holes with accretion disks that emit light across the electromagnetic spectrum, including X-rays and gamma rays.
Black holes at the center of galaxies are massive, with some reaching billions of solar masses, forming concurrently with their host galaxies.
Galactic collisions can trigger black holes to become active, leading to the formation of larger galaxies like "Milkomeda."
The Milky Way is part of the Local Group, which includes the Andromeda Galaxy heading towards us at 100 km/sec for an inevitable collision in a few billion years.
When the Milky Way and Andromeda merge, they will likely form an elliptical galaxy called "Milkomeda," possibly leading to both black holes at their centers becoming active.
Despite the collision being billions of years away, it may occur before the Sun dies, potentially affecting Earth's position within the new galaxy.
Andromeda's black hole has 40 million solar masses, ten times larger than the Milky Way's, with the two black holes likely orbiting each other after the galactic merger.- Galaxies in the Universe tend to clump together on various scales, forming groups like The Local Group, galaxy clusters, and superclusters.
A typical galaxy cluster can be tens of millions of light-years across and contain thousands of galaxies, like the Virgo cluster which is about 50 million light-years away and may have as many as a quadrillion stars.
Galaxies in clusters are bound by mutual gravity and move through the cluster on long orbits, sometimes resulting in huge elliptical galaxies at the center due to collisions between smaller galaxies.
Superclusters, consisting of several dozen clusters, are even larger structures in the Universe, with the Virgo Supercluster being part of the Laniakea Supercluster which may have 100,000 galaxies across 500 million light-years.
Superclusters are not randomly distributed but appear along interconnected filaments in the Universe, with vast regions called voids between them.
The large-scale structure of the Universe holds clues to fundamental questions like the composition of the Universe, its origins, and ultimate fate.
The Hubble Deep Field observation revealed thousands of galaxies in a tiny section of the sky, leading to an estimate of around a hundred billion galaxies in the entire Universe.