AGN Ionization: A Dance Between Photoionization and Shocks
AGN ionization sources: identifying the balance between photoionization and shocks.
AGN ionization sources: identifying the balance between photoionization and shocks.
Today’s paper investigates how shocks interact with isothermal, gaseous filaments in the interstellar medium. It reveals that the structure of the resulting wake is dependent on the speed of the shock and orientation, density, and length of the filament.
That’s quite a sonic boom, particularly given that the speed of sound in the hot plasma is around 2 million miles per hour!
What causes the giant radio and gamma-ray bubbles inflated from our galactic center? This paper provides another good argument for star formation as the culprit.
We think that blazars and gamma-ray bursts are both powered by extremely relativistic jets — but how is the kinetic energy of these jets transformed into the staggering amounts of radiation we observe?
Ultra-high energy cosmic rays may be produced via shock acceleration. This paper presents theoretical upper limits on the energies of the cosmic rays that can be produced in this way, providing a means of testing this theory.