PARIS: Dark matter, the mysterious matter that scientists have yet to be able to observe, makes up most of the matter in our galaxy by a factor of 6 to 1. According to the author of a new study, it also governs the growth of super-massive black holes.
Every massive galaxy has a black hole at its center, and is surrounded on the exterior by a halo of dark matter that weighs as much as a trillion suns and extends for hundreds of thousands of light years.
The more massive the galaxy, the bigger the black hole at its center. Because the black hole is millions of times smaller than it’s galaxy it seems counter-intuitive that the size of the galaxy should determine the size of the black hole and according to a new study there is no relationship. Instead it is dark matter that determines the size of the black hole.
“There seems to be a mysterious link between the amount of dark matter a galaxy holds and the size of its central black hole, even though the two operate on vastly different scales,” said lead author Akos Bogdan of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) in a statement.
The research was designed to settle a dispute in astrophysics. It was originally thought that the total mass of stars in elliptical galaxies determined the mass of the black hole. More recent studies suggested that it was the dark matter halo surrounding the galaxy that determined the mass of black holes. Both of these theories still have their proponents.
If you look out the window of your house and see trees bending and swaying and leaves and bits of debris blowing by you know it is windy, even though you cannot see the wind. Dark matter works something like that. It cannot be seen but scientists know it is there because of the gravitational effect it has on objects.
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