Publication Date:
2014-07-22
Description:
Massive outflows driven by active galactic nuclei are widely recognized to have a key role in the evolution of galaxies, by heating the ambient gas, expelling it from the nuclear regions, and thereby affecting the star-formation histories of the galaxy bulges. It has been proposed that the powerful jets of relativistic particles (such as electrons) launched by some active nuclei can both accelerate and heat the molecular gas, which often dominates the mass budgets of the outflows. Clear evidence for this mechanism, in the form of detailed associations between the molecular gas kinematics and features in the radio-emitting jets, has however been lacking. Here we report that the warm molecular hydrogen gas in the western radio lobe of the Seyfert galaxy IC 5063 is moving at high velocities-up to about 600 kilometres per second-relative to the galaxy disk. This suggests that the molecules have been accelerated by fast shocks driven into the interstellar medium by the expanding radio jets. These results demonstrate the general feasibility of accelerating molecular outflows in fast shocks driven by active nuclei.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Tadhunter, C -- Morganti, R -- Rose, M -- Oonk, J B R -- Oosterloo, T -- England -- Nature. 2014 Jul 24;511(7510):440-3. doi: 10.1038/nature13520. Epub 2014 Jul 6.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S3 7RH, UK. ; 1] ASTRON, The Netherlands Institute of Radio Astronomy, PO Box 2, 7990 AA, Dwingeloo, The Netherlands [2] Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, University of Groningen, PO Box 800, 9700 AV Groningen, The Netherlands. ; Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA. ; ASTRON, The Netherlands Institute of Radio Astronomy, PO Box 2, 7990 AA, Dwingeloo, The Netherlands.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25043049" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Print ISSN:
0028-0836
Electronic ISSN:
1476-4687
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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