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Galaxy may have eaten all its neighbours and now it's all alone

Astronomers have spotted an object with all the hallmarks of a galaxy cluster, but containing only one galaxy – hinting it may have swallowed up all of its neighbours

15 March 2023

The lonely galaxy containing a supermassive black hole, two jets, and an X-ray hotspot, all surrounded by hot gas — The lonely galaxy containing a supermassive black hole, two jets and an X-ray hotspot, all surrounded by hot gas
X-ray: NASA/CXC/Univ. of Torino/V. Missaglia et al.

A distant galaxy seems to be the only one left in its cluster. It has all the signatures of a galaxy cluster that should contain hundreds of galaxies, but it appears to be all alone, which may cause a rethink of how galaxy clusters form and evolve.

Juan Madrid at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley and his colleagues examined the 3C 297 galaxy, which is about 9.2 billion light …

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