Supernovae are "planted" space with heavy elements in the early universe - Reuters

© Akihiro Ikeshita

MOSCOW, November 1 – RIA Novosti. The distribution of iron in the Perseus galaxy cluster suggests that galaxies formed in a region already “seeded” chemical elements because of the activity of supernovas and black holes in the the early universe, according to a paper published in the journal Nature.

Norbert Werner (Norbert Werner) from the Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology in the name of Kavli Stanford (USA) and his colleagues with Japanese ray space telescope Suzaku examined the distribution of iron in the Perseus galaxy cluster at a distance of 250 million light-years away from us. They found that the concentration of iron varies equally in all directions from the center of the cluster, and its total mass is 50 times greater than the mass of the Sun.

“This suggests that the iron – and, generally, to other heavy elements – has been widely distributed in the universe, when the congestion onset form. We came to the conclusion that any explanation of this takes away the main role of supernovae explosions and activity of black holes,” – said Werner.

most active “producer” of iron in the cosmos are supernovae of type Ia. Scientists have calculated that for the “seeding” of the space in which there was an accumulation of Perseus, the chemical elements needed at least 40 billion supernovas. They suggest that this was about 10-12 billion years ago, when the stars in the universe were formed particularly active.

© NASA / ISAS / DSS / O. Urban et al., MNRAS

distribution of iron in the Perseus galaxy cluster was the same in all directions. The blue color shows the least element.

While often supernovae explode, and have been very active supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies in the absorption of the substance of his throw in a jet. Because of all the activity of the chemical elements produced by supernovae were thrown far beyond their home galaxies and mixed with the intergalactic gas. Then, in the areas with the highest density of matter formed galaxy clusters.

If the theory is correct, then in many galaxy clusters concentration and distribution of iron will be similar, the researchers suggest.