2023-07-30 06:00:04
The universe is a fascinating mystery, home to wonders of unparalleled complexity and beauty. Among these, supermassive black holes, residing at the heart of galaxies, have always piqued human curiosity. Thanks to technological advances, researchers are shedding new light on their rapid growth and impact on their host galaxy. Here’s what they discovered.
The Mouse Galaxies (NGC 4676) are famous interacting galaxies that are currently undergoing a process of collision (A collision is a direct impact between two objects. Such an impact transmits part of…) and fusion.
Recent discoveries in astrophysics have confirmed the existence of supermassive black holes at the heart of galaxies. These cosmic monsters, with a mass ranging from millions to billions of times that of our Sun, came into existence less than a billion (One billion (1,000,000,000) is the natural number following nine hundred.. .) years following the Big Bang (The Big Bang is the dense and hot period that the universe experienced a while ago…). Understanding how they were able to reach such a mass in such a short time remains a crucial question in contemporary astrophysics.
A research team consisting of Chi-Hong Lin and Ke-Jung Chen from the Astronomy Institute (Astronomy is the science of observation of the stars, seeking to explain…) and astrophysics of the Academia Sinica (ASIAA) and Chorng-Yuan Hwang of the Institute of Astronomy of the University (A university is an establishment of higher education whose objective is central national…) has brought a significant advance in the theory (The word theory comes from the Greek word theorein, which means “to contemplate, observe,…) of the formation of black holes ( In astrophysics, a black hole is a massive object whose gravitational field is so intense…) supermassive. Their work has been published in The Astrophysical Journal.
Using high-resolution simulations of galaxy mergers, the team studied the growth of supermassive black holes and their impact on host galaxies. They introduced a new model of molecular clouds and discovered that the growth of black holes occurs mainly through the accretion of these clouds during galaxy mergers.
Arp 148 is a galaxy with a peculiar structure formed following the collision of two galaxies, where a large amount of matter falls into the center of the galaxies, giving rise to its unique appearance.
Due to the dynamics of gravitational forces, the huge molecular clouds can effectively fall towards the center of the galaxy relative to neutral and ionized gases. This process rapidly increases the rate of star formation in the galaxy and provides the nutrients necessary for the rapid growth of the black hole (In astrophysics, a black hole is a massive object whose gravitational field is so intense…).
This allows black holes that initially had only a few million solar masses to grow to billions of solar masses in a few hundred million years. This explains the observed properties of merging galaxies and their black holes.
“Our research findings may offer people a deeper understanding of how galaxies evolve. We anticipate that there will be more observational results to verify our conclusion,” said lead author Chi-Hong Lin. .
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