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COLUMBIA, Md. is MOUNTAIN VIEW, California, November 27, 2020 / PRNewswire / – Black holes are thought to absorb so much surrounding material that they end the life of their host galaxy. In that process they create a highly energetic object called a quasar that was previously thought to stop the birth of stars. Now researchers have discovered a galaxy that is surviving the ravenous forces of a quasar by continuing to give birth to new stars – about 100 stars the size of the Sun per year.
The discovery made by the Stratospheric Observatory for infrared astronomy (SOFIA) can explain how huge galaxies became even though the Universe is dominated by galaxies that no longer form stars. The results are published in Astrophysical Journal.
“This shows us that the growth of active black holes does not stop the birth of stars instantly, which goes against all current scientific predictions,” he said. Allison Kirkpatrick, assistant professor at the University of Kansas in Lawrence Kansas and co-author of the study. “It’s making us rethink our theories of how galaxies evolve.”
SOFIA, a joint project of NASA and the German Aerospace Center, DLR, studied an extremely distant galaxy, located more than 5.25 billion light-years away called CQ4479. At the center is a special type of quasar that was recently discovered by Kirkpatrick called a “cold quasar”. In this type of quasar, the active black hole is still feasting on material from its host galaxy, but the quasar’s intense energy hasn’t devastated all the cold gas, so stars can continue to form and the galaxy survives. This is the first time that researchers have examined a cold quasar in detail, directly measuring the growth of the black hole, the birth rate of the stars, and how much cold gas remains to power the galaxy.
“We were surprised to see another extravagant galaxy that challenges current theories,” he said Kevin Cooke, postdoctoral researcher at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansasand lead author of this study. “If this tandem growth continued, both the black hole and the stars surrounding it would triple in size before the galaxy reaches the end of its life.”
As one of the brightest and most distant objects in the universe, quasars, or “near-stellar radio sources”, are notoriously difficult to observe, because they often eclipse everything around them. They form when a particularly active black hole consumes huge amounts of material from the surrounding galaxy, creating strong gravitational forces. As more and more material turns faster and faster towards the center of the black hole, the material warms up and shines brightly. A quasar produces so much energy that it often blurs everything around it, blinding attempts to observe the galaxy that hosts it. Current theories predict that this energy heats up or expels the cold gas needed to create stars, stopping their birth and causing a lethal blow to the growth of a galaxy. But SOFIA reveals that there is a relatively short period in which the star birth of the galaxy can continue as the black hole party continues to fuel the quasar’s powerful forces.
Rather than looking directly at newborn stars, SOFIA used its 9-foot telescope to detect infrared light radiated by the heated dust from the star-forming process. Use of data collected by SOFIA’s Scientists were able to estimate the amount of star formation over the past 100 million years with a high-resolution Airborne Wideband Camera-Plus, or HAWC + instrument.
“SOFIA it shows us in this short window of time where the two processes can coexist, “Cooke said.” It is the only telescope capable of studying the birth of stars in this galaxy without being overwhelmed by the intensely bright quasar. “
The short window of joint growth of the black hole and the star represents an early stage in the death of a galaxy, in which the galaxy has not yet succumbed to the devastating effects of the quasar. Search continues with SOFIA it is necessary to understand if many other galaxies go through a similar stage with conjoined black hole and star growth before reaching the end of life. Future observations with the James Webb Space Telescope, which is expected to launch in 2021, would reveal how quasars affect the overall shape of their host galaxies.
About SOFIA
SOFIA is a joint project of NASA and the German Aerospace Center. NASA’s Ames Research Center a California Silicon Valley operates the SOFIA program, science and mission operations in collaboration with the Universities Space Research Association, based in Columbia, Marylandand German SOFIA Institute at the University of Stuttgart. The aircraft is maintained and operated by NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center Building 703, in Palmdale, California. The HAWC + instrument was developed and delivered to NASA by a multi-institution team led by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).
About USRA
Founded in 1969, under the auspices of the National Academy of Sciences at the request of the United States government, the Universities Space Research Association (USRA) is a non-profit corporation established to promote science, technology, and engineering related to space. USRA operates scientific institutes and facilities and conducts other major research and education programs, with federal funding. USRA engages the university community and employs in-house scientific leadership, innovative research and development, and project management experience. More information on USRA is available at www.usra.edu.
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