FRANCE: The three little pigs were rightly outraged when the wolf blew down their houses, but that’s nothing compared to the havoc some supermassive black holes wreak on their host galaxies.
Astronomers have now discovered how these galactic beasts, found in the heart of most galaxies, huff and puff and blow their host’s raw star-building material away.
“This is the first time that we have seen a supermassive black hole in action, blowing away the galaxy’s reservoir of star-making gas,” said research leader, Francesco Tombesi, from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
Astronomers first witnessed the enormous power supermassive black holes could wield on their hosts when they spied superwinds ejecting huge amounts of gas from these galaxies – the equivalent of ejecting 1000 Suns every year.
“The only thing that has the energy to do that is a supermassive black hole,” says Swinburne University of Technology astrophysicist Alan Duffy, who was not involved in the research.
But until now it has been difficult for astronomers to capture the exact mechanism behind this process because their view was obscured by large amounts of interstellar gas.
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