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From the mid-1990s, astronomers discovered that each galaxy in the universe harbors a supermassive black hole at its center. These monsters, with masses of billions of suns, can swallow vast amounts of gas and dust. When so much mass is near the naval and the crunches occur simultaneously, massive amounts of radiation are flushed out into space.
Astronomers have also known for years that some large galaxies do not form any new stars; They are filled with aged sun. Is the peak activity of a supermassive black hole associated with the lack of star-making?
A team led by astronomer Asa Bluck of the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom decided to investigate. They selected about 100 galaxies with active supermassive black holes. Over the past 5 years, they have studied those galaxies at optical, near-infrared and X-ray wavelengths using orbiting and ground-based telescopes. Specifically, researchers estimated the rate of rising of a black hole by the amount of radiation they emit. The team compared the mass of a black hole with the total mass of its host galaxies to determine how much matter they swallowed.
On Friday, at a meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society in Glasgow, UK, Bloke will report that the most active supermassive black holes release staggering amounts of radiation during their most energetic periods, which can last hundreds of millions of years - they say. "To separate every giant galaxy in the universe at least 25 times." X-ray emissions from these monsters, he adds, dwarf the combined X-radiation from every other source in the universe. Such emissions can cause almost all of the cold, compact dust to fly in the galaxy, preventing that dust from ever accumulating in new stars. He said that of the 100 galaxies the team surveyed, at least one-third have lost their star-forming ability due to radiation from their central black hole. In other galaxies, supermassive black holes are less active, and the star-forming process is clear.
The ultimate impact on the health of the galaxy is profound. "Without new stars to replace them," the old stars will age, repaint, and eventually grow out of existence, "Bluck says. Galaxies will grow as darkness and die as well."
If life develops during the active phase of a central black hole, powerful radiation will almost certainly destroy it. But after the black hole settles, Bluck says, the conditions will be far more hospitable; No new star will disrupt and disrupt the galactic neighborhood by churning gas and dust and emitting its own radiation.
The research "indicates an advance in the discovery of why some galaxies are not forming new stars," says astronomer Steven Willner of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Although the findings confirm that active supermassive black holes emit a lot of X-rays, they point out, whether the radiation actually empties their gas galaxies "is a good hypothesis - though still far from a certainty. is."
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