The black hole gives birth to stars in nearby dwarf galaxies.
Studies show that black holes aren’t always as cruel and destructive as they are used to be. Instead, they seem to be able to form stars, not just eat them.
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has detected a black hole in a galaxy known as Henize 2-10, which is 30 million light-years away.
As well as showing that black holes can be more productive than we realized, this new research could also help us understand where supermassive black holes come from.
Amy Raines, the researcher who published the first evidence of a black hole in a galaxy in 2011, is also the lead investigator on the new paper..
“I knew early on that something unusual and special was going on at Henize 2-10, and now Hubble has provided a very clear picture of the relationship between the black hole and the neighboring star-forming region 230 light-years from the black. hole,” he said.
A paper describing the results, “Star Formation Caused by Black Holes in the Henize 2-10 Dwarf Galaxy,” was published today in temper tantrums.
In larger galaxies, material falling into a black hole is torn apart by the magnetic field, producing a plasma explosion that travels close to the speed of light. Any gas cloud caught on board would be so hot it would form a star altogether.
The black hole in the Henize 2-10 dwarf galaxy is smaller, but the material flowing from it flows more gently. This means that the gas has been compressed in the right way to help the star form, not prevent it.
“Only 30 million light-years away, Henize 2-10 is close enough that Hubble can capture very clear images and spectral evidence of the black hole’s outflow. An additional surprise was that instead of suppressing star formation, the outflow caused the birth of new stars.
Hubble’s new black hole study could also help provide better detail on how these supermassive black holes formed. Because they remain small, this can provide an idea of what other black holes – now bigger – were like when they were young, and how they were able to form and grow.
“The era of the first black holes wasn’t something we could see, so it really becomes a big question: Where did it come from? Dwarf galaxies may hold some memories of black hole implantation scenarios that shouldn’t have happened. been lost in time and space,” Rains said in a statement.
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