M87 in 60 Seconds

Narrator (April Hobart, CXC): Earlier this year, a powerful volcano in Iceland erupted and caused havoc with air traffic around Europe. Elsewhere in the Universe, a similar galactic super volcano has been erupting for millions of years. This composite image from NASAs Chandra X-ray Observatory with radio data from the Very Large Array shows a cosmic volcano being driven by a black hole in the center of the M87 galaxy. This eruption is pumping energy into the black holes surroundings and preventing hundreds of millions of new stars from forming just as the volcano in Iceland caused disruptions in the Earths atmosphere. The comparison between the black hole in M87 and the volcano in Iceland shows that even though astronomical phenomena occur in exotic settings and over huge scales, the physics can be very similar to events on Earth.