A supermassive black hole is nurturing baby stars far, far away
super massive black holes they are mysterious entities that lurk hungrily in the hearts of probably every major galaxy in the observable Universe, where they hide in a sinister and ravenous secret, waiting for their dinner to come swirling into their expectant maw. These knockdowns can consist of destroyed stars, disrupted gas clouds, or any other unfortunate celestial objects that have been torn apart by the large black hole’s gravitational grips. Once a doomed object has passed the fatal point of no return, known as the event horizon, can never return out of the air from this gravitational beast, and is lost to the rest of the Universe forever. But despite its bad reputation for being destructively ruthless, a supermassive black hole lurking in the heart of a galaxy far, far away has proven to have an enriching character. This object has a mother heart and is aiding in the birth of bright new baby stars more than a million light-years away. One light year is equal to 6 trillions miles
The discovery of this maternal heart of darkness, which has managed to spark star birth at mind-boggling distances, as well as across multiple galaxies, was made by astronomers using NASA. Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes. If confirmed, the black hole would represent the widest range ever observed for such an object behaving like a nurturing stellar mother, kick-starting star birth. This maternal heart of darkness has actually enhanced star formation.
“This is the first time we’ve seen a single black hole fuel star birth in more than one galaxy at a time. It’s amazing to think that one galaxy’s black hole can have a say in what happens in other galaxies millions of trillions of years away.” miles away.” ,” commented Dr. Roberto Gilli on a November 26, 2019 Chandra Observatory press release. Dr. Gilli is from the National Institute of Astrophysics (INAF) in Bologna, Italy, and is the lead author of the study describing the discovery.
Said the raven never again”
Supermassive black holes are greedy entities that weigh millions to billions of times the mass of our Sun. Our own galaxy, the Milky Way, is home to just such a gravitational beast, residing at its secret heart. Our resident supermassive black hole is called Sagittarius A*and as supermassive beasts go, it’s relatively low mass. Sagittarius A* (pronounced saj-a-star) it weighs “merely” millions, as opposed to billions, of solar masses. The dark heart of our Milky Way is quiet now. It is an ancient beast, awakening only occasionally to feast on an unfortunate celestial object that has strayed too close to where it expects. Although it is mostly inactive, when both Sagittarius A* and the Universe was young, ate greedily, and glowed brightly, like a quasar. quasars are the brilliantly dazzling accretion disks circling active supermassive black holes that haunt the centers of galaxies.
Despite their misleading name, black holes aren’t just empty spaces. In fact, they come in more than one size. In addition to the supermassive variety, there are stellar-mass black holes that form when an extremely massive star runs out of its necessary supply of nuclear fusion fuel and explodes violently as a core-collapse (Type II) supernova. The gravitational collapse of a particularly massive star heralds its natural “death”. When a doomed heavy star has no more nuclear fusion fuel to burn, it has reached the end of the stellar path. Nuclear fusion inside a bright, turbulent still “living” star creates radiation pressure which tries to push all the stellar material outwards. Meanwhile, the star’s own gravity tries to pull everything in. This creates a delicate balance that keeps a star alive. Unfortunately, when a giant, massive star runs out of fuel and contains a heavy iron-nickel core, it can no longer produce pressure. Gravity wins in the end. The core of the star collapses and goes supernova. Where once there was a star, there is no more.
Astronomers have also found compelling evidence for the existence of intermediate mass black holes that they weigh less than their supermassive relatives, but more than their stellar-mass “relatives”. Crush enough mass into a small enough space and a black hole will form every time. Some scientists have proposed that these intermediate mass the objects support each other and merge into the primitive Cosmos. For this reason, it has been suggested that they served as the “seeds” that created the supermassive black holes that lurk at the mysterious hearts of most, if not all, large galaxies, including our own.
The Milky Way’s resident supermassive black hole is no lone gravitational beast. Sagittarius A* has a lot of company. In fact, theoretical studies indicate that a large population of stellar-mass black holes (possibly as many as 20,000) could be shooting light fantastically around our own galaxy’s resident central black hole. A study published in 2018, which was based on data acquired from Chandra, suggests a treasure trove of stellar-mass black holes lurking at the core of our Milky Way.
Some current theories propose that supermassive black holes already existed in the ancient Universe. During that very early era, clouds of gas and doomed stars swirled, then descended into the grasping, gravitational, grasping claws of the hungry beast. never more to return from the violently swirling maelstrom that surrounds this strange entity. As the captured and doomed material swirled towards its inevitable demise, it formed a bright and violent storm of dazzling material around the black hole: its accretion disk (quasar). As this glowing, fiery material got hotter and hotter, it threw up a furious storm of radiation, especially as it traveled closer and closer to the sun. event horizon which is the point of no return.
In the 18th century, John Michell and Pierre-Simon Laplace proposed the possibility that such insults to our evolved common sense on Earth as black holes might actually exist in nature. In 1915, Albert Einstein, in his General Theory of Relativity, predicted the existence of objects with gravitational fields so powerful that anyone unlucky enough to get too close to their pull would be consumed. However, this concept seemed so outrageous at the time that Einstein rejected his own idea, despite his calculations to the contrary.
In 1916, the physicist Karl Schwarzschild formulated the first modern solution for General relativity which described a black hole. However, its interpretation as a zone of Space-time, from which absolutely nothing could escape once caught, it was not properly understood until nearly half a century later. Until then, these gravitational beasts were considered just mathematical oddities. Finally, in the mid-20th century, theoretical physicists were able to show that these strange children of Mother Nature represent a generic prediction of General relativity.
A maternal black hole with a Midas touch
The supermassive black hole that feeds it resides at the center of a galaxy some 9.9 billion light-years from Earth. The galaxy is in the company of at least seven neighboring galaxies, according to observations made with the Very Large Telescope (VLT) of the European Southern Observatory and the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT).
Using the Jansky Very Large Array from the National Science Foundation (NSA), astronomers had previously discovered radio wave emission from a jet of high-energy particles that is about a million light-years long. The jet can be traced back to the supermassive black hole that feeds it, which Chandra detected as a powerful source of X-rays. The X-rays are created by hot gas swirling around the supermassive black hole. Dr. Gilli and his colleagues also saw a diffuse cloud of X-ray emission surrounding one end of the radio jet. This X-ray emission probably comes from a huge bubble of gas heated by the dance of the energetic particles in the radio jet with the surrounding matter.
As the scorchingly hot bubble expanded and invaded neighboring galaxies, it may have compressed the cold gas in these galactic neighbors. This would have given birth to fiery baby stars. All of the galaxies involved reside at approximately the same distance (approximately 400,000 light-years) from the center of the expanding bubble. Scientists calculate that the stellar birth rate is two to five times higher than typical galaxies with similar masses and distances from our planet.
“The story of King Midas tells of his magic touch that can turn metal into gold. Here we have a case of a black hole that helped turn gas into stars, and its range is intergalactic,” said study co-author Dr. Dr Marco Mignoli. on November 26, 2019 Chandra press release. Dr. Mignoli is also from the INAF.
Astronomers have observed many cases where a black hole influences its environment through “negative feedback.” This means that they have often observed a sinister black hole in the act of hindering the formation of new stars. This can happen when the jets emitted by the black hole send so much energy into the scorching gas of a galaxy, or a cluster of galaxies, that the gas can’t cool enough to form a large number of baby stars. Although it may seem to defy common sense, things have to cool down before a hot baby star can be born.
“Black holes have a well-earned reputation for being powerful and deadly, but not always. This is an excellent example of how they sometimes defy that stereotype and can instead be empowering,” commented co-author Alessandro Peca in the Chandra press release. Sin, before the INAFHe is currently a doctoral student at the University of Miami.
The astronomers used a total of six days of Chandra observation time spread over a period of five months.
“It is only thanks to this very deep observation that we saw the hot gas bubble produced by the black hole. By targeting objects similar to this, we can discover that positive feedback is very common in the formation of galaxy clusters and groups.” noted co-author Dr. Colin Norman in the Chandra press release. Dr. Norman is from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.
An article describing these results has been published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.