🔄FROM THE ARCHIVE: Astronomers have discovered supermassive black holes at the center of numerous galaxies, including our own. Now a new theory explains why.
One of the great mysteries in astronomy is how galaxies form. At issue is why stars gather into “island universes” rather than spreading out evenly through the universe.
But there is a problem with this idea. If it is true, something must stop stars from falling into black holes as they form, but nobody knows what.Now a new theory of black holes explains this process. The new theory “gives a general mechanism by which a central black hole can catalyze galaxy formation,” says Stephen Adler, at Princeton University in New Jersey.
When this wind collides with infalling matter, the momentum cancels out leaving the products of the collision a certain distance from the black hole. It is this matter that then forms into stars. However, Adler is the first to admit that his new theory needs to be developed further. For example, his early calculations focus on non-rotating black holes, which are simpler to tackle theoretically. More work is needed to understand how a rotating black hole can produce this kind of “wind”.
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