Although supermassive black holes-which can weigh up to billions of times the mass of our sun-dominate galactic centers, galaxies also contain many smaller black holes, most weighing several times-or several tens of times-the sun’s mass. Theorists predict that there must be an intermediate class weighing between 100 and 1 million solar masses, but so far there is little firm evidence for their existence.
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The swathes of hot gas, detected in X-ray images from Nasa’s Chandra space telescope, appear to be sweeping cooler hydrogen gas ahead of them.
Given the fact that black holes do send out massive amounts of gas through such “burps”, they could in fact, trigger the formation of new star from the remnants of the ones they have so ferociously consumed.
This week, NASA announced that it had found a very rude black hole in a galaxy 26 million light-years from Earth – a black hole that eats way too fast and then burps up its food.
“For an analogy, astronomers often refer to black holes as “eating” stars and gas”. The X-ray observations, shown in purple, reveal the locations of two black holes, which were brought together by a merger of two galaxies.
“In the early universe, this sort of thing happened more often”, Schlegel says. “It is common for big black holes to expel gas outward, but rare to have such a close, resolved view of these events”. It’s suggested this interaction caused gas to be funnelled into the black hole, laying the foundations for a burp so powerful it may actually end up giving birth to new stars. “It’s the best snowplow of shocked material I’ve ever seen”, said Schlegel, of the University of Texas at San Antonio.
“This shows that black holes can create, not just destroy”, said co-author Marie Machacek of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
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When many people think of a black hole, they think of a gaping cosmic vacuum that gobbles up any gas and stars that cross its path. The researchers estimate that it would have taken about 1 to 3 million years for the inner arc to reach its current position, and 3 to 6 million years for the outer arc. “There are very few of these known-they are very rare and hard to find-but they’re interesting because we think they may be an evolutionary stopover in the process of building supermassive black holes”. “But at the same time, it can be responsible for how some stars form, showing that black holes can be creative, not just destructive”. She presented her findings this week at the American Astronomical Society and tells Here & Now’s Jeremy Hobson about her findings.
