A massive shockwave in space is rolling up galaxy gas into giant "smoke rings" that are hundreds of thousands of light-years wide.
arXiv · March 13, 2026 · 2603.12082
The Takeaway
When galaxy clusters collide, they create shockwaves that can strip the atmosphere off individual galaxies. In the Norma cluster, astronomers discovered that these shocks are actually 'rolling' the gas cocoons of galaxies into perfect vortex rings—the same physics that creates a smoke ring, but on a scale millions of times larger than our solar system.
From the abstract
The merger shocks generated by the collision of galaxy clusters elevate the pressure within the intracluster medium, significantly influencing the evolution of embedded cluster galaxies. We detect a merger shock (Mach number $\sim 1.3$) on the northwest side of the closest rich galaxy cluster Norma (A3627), using XMM-Newton and Chandra data. The textbook ram pressure stripping (RPS) galaxy ESO 137-001 appears to be located in the post-shock region. The shock boosts RPS and may induce the formati