A new discovery made with the Hubble Space Telescope has revealed a completely different function of black holes. It seems that contrary to what most of us know, black holes are not gigantic monsters that absorb and destroy everything they see.
In the article they shared in the journal Nature, scientists at Montana State University say that they discovered a new star in Henize 2-10, a dwarf galaxy, and that this star was formed by the black hole in the center of the galaxy.
A new era opened in the formation of stars
(Galaxy Henize 2-10)
The star formation of a black hole has changed much of what is known about star formation. Amy Reines, University of Virginia research fellow and lead researcher on this study, said, “As a graduate student ten years ago thinking I would spend my career on star formation, I looked at the data from Henize 2-10 and everything changed. I knew from the very beginning that something unusual and special was going on.”
After this great discovery in the formation of stars, a question that could not be answered for many years came to the minds of researchers again: How do black holes form, where do they come from? “Dwarf galaxies can teach us a lot about black hole formation, one of the biggest mysteries in space,” says Amy Reines.
So how does a black hole trigger star formation?
(video shared by NASA)
Although black holes have a tremendous gravitational pull, material falling towards black holes can sometimes be directed by magnetic fields into outflowing gas streams. Massive black holes at the centers of larger galaxies are too fast to allow star formation with the ejected gas.
In dwarf galaxies, the situation is slightly different, as we learned from this research. The black holes of dwarf galaxies are also dwarfed, so the slower flow of energy and gas allows this dense cocoon of gas to be compressed enough to form new stars. Therefore, dwarf galaxies and their black holes can be of great benefit to humanity in studying the formations in the early universe.