Astronomers now believe that a supermassive black hole lurks in the cores of most large galaxies, including the Milky Way. Blasts of radiation from these monstrous black holes can influence the surrounding galaxies, by encouraging or snuffing out the process of star formation in stellar nurseries.
Illustration of black hole winds. (Image Credit: NASA).
New Delhi: The central supermassive black holes in galaxies can carve and shape surrounding clouds of gas and dust, the raw material from which stars are formed. The blasts of radiation, result in winds similar to those resulting from the energetic outpourings from young stars in stellar nurseries, reaching speeds of 16,000 kilometres per second. The research suggests that black holes can continuously shape the evolution of galaxies by either encouraging or snuffing out star formation.
The central supermassive black holes can either drive away and dissipate stellar nurseries where new stars are born, or cause clumps in the material, seeding the formation of new stars. The researchers used years of data collected from a quasar, which is a particularly bright and turbulent variety of black hole from the early universe. These are actively feeding black holes, surrounding by bright accretion disks, glowing because of the extreme friction in the tortured material falling inwards into the black hole.
Black Hole Winds
Astronomers examined the quasar designated as SBS 1408+544, collected through a campaign by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) called the Black Hole Mapper Reverberation Mapping Project. Precisely examining the light from the distant object allowed astronomers to track the gas surrounding the black hole, as well as the influence of the black hole winds on the surrounding accretion disk.
A paper describing the research has been published in The Astrophysical Journal. Lead author of the research, Catherine Grier says, “The material in that disk is always falling into the black hole, and the friction of that pulling and pulling heats up the disk and makes it very, very hot and very, very bright. These quasars are really luminous, and because there’s a large range of temperatures from the interior to the far parts of the disk, their emission covers almost all of the electromagnetic spectrum.”
Shambhu Kumar is a science communicator, making complex scientific topics accessible to all. His articles explore breakthroughs in various scientific disciplines, from space exploration to cutting-edge research.
