X-ray winds (Photo : NASA/JPL)
Unimaginably powerful "X-ray winds" from supermassive black holes can prevent stars from forming, suggesting black holes also have a hand in preventing the creation of entire galaxies.
Most galaxies have supermassive black holes millions to billions of times the mass of our Sun at their centers. A few of these black holes, otherwise known as active galactic nuclei, devour the matter surrounding them to create black hole X-ray winds.
A new study published in Nature shows a link between the X-ray wind created by a supermassive black hole and the dispersal of raw material that could otherwise have formed stars.
Researchers observed a galaxy designated as "F11119+3257" located 2.3 billion light years away using the Herschel Space Observatory and the X-ray Imaging Spectrometer attached to the Suzaku astronomy satellite. At the center of this galaxy is a black hole as massive as 16 million of our suns.
NASA thinks ultraluminous infrared galaxies like F11119 represent an early phase in the evolution of quasars, a type of black-hole-powered galaxy with extreme luminosity across a broad wavelength range.
Researchers found gas racing outward at a speed of 170 million miles per hour from the center of the black hole. This X-ray wind was generated because the black hole consumed the gas around it in the accretion disk, which led to superheated conditions.
This X-ray wind occurs close to the black hole, and creates a shock wave that blasts away dust and gas in a much larger area. The study estimates the outflow from this particular black hole extends up to 1,000 light years from the galaxy's center.
This tells astronomers more about how black holes are connected to the process of star formation in the galaxies around them.
"These connections suggested the black hole was providing some form of feedback that modulated star formation in the wider galaxy, but it was difficult to see how," said research team member Sylvain Veilleux, an astronomy professor at University of Maryland.
"With the discovery of powerful molecular outflows of cold gas in galaxies with active black holes, we began to uncover the connection."
A new NASA video about the X-ray wind can be seen here.
