Posted on by Tammy Plotner

Emerging Supermassive Black Holes Choke Star Formation

The LABOCA camera on the ESO-operated 12-metre Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) telescope reveals distant galaxies undergoing the most intense type of star formation activity known, called a starburst. This image shows these distant galaxies, found in a region of sky known as the Extended Chandra Deep Field South, in the constellation of Fornax (The Furnace). The galaxies seen by LABOCA are shown in red, overlaid on an infrared view of the region as seen by the IRAC camera on the Spitzer Space Telescope. Credit: ESO, APEX (MPIfR/ESO/OSO), A. Weiss et al., NASA Spitzer Science Center

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Located on the Chajnantor plateau in the foothills of the Chilean Andes, ESO’s APEX telescope has been busy looking into deep, deep space. Recently a group of astronomers released their findings regarding massive galaxies in connection with extreme times of star formation in the early Universe. What they found was a sharp cut-off point in stellar creation, leaving “massive – but passive – galaxies” filled with mature stars. What could cause such a scenario? Try the materialization of a supermassive black hole…

By integrating data taken with the LABOCA camera on the ESO-operated 12-metre Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) telescope with measurements made with ESO’s Very Large Telescope, NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope and other facilities, astronomers were able to observe the relationship of bright, distant galaxies where they form into clusters. They found that the density of the population plays a major role – the tighter the grouping, the more massive the dark matter halo. These findings are the considered the most accurate made so far for this galaxy type.

Located about 10 billion light years away, these submillimetre galaxies were once home to starburst events – a time of intense formation. By obtaining estimations of dark matter halos and combining that information with computer modeling, scientists are able to hypothesize how the halos expanding with time. Eventually these once active galaxies settled down to form giant ellipticals – the most massive type known.

“This is the first time that we’ve been able to show this clear link between the most energetic starbursting galaxies in the early Universe, and the most massive galaxies in the present day,” says team leader Ryan Hickox of Dartmouth College, USA and Durham University, UK.

However, that’s not all the new observations have uncovered. Right now there’s speculation the starburst activity may have only lasted around 100 million years. While this is a very short period of cosmological time, this massive galactic function was once capable of producing double the amount of stars. Why it should end so suddenly is a puzzle that astronomers are eager to understand.

“We know that massive elliptical galaxies stopped producing stars rather suddenly a long time ago, and are now passive. And scientists are wondering what could possibly be powerful enough to shut down an entire galaxy’s starburst,” says team member Julie Wardlow of the University of California at Irvine, USA and Durham University, UK.

Right now the team’s findings are offering up a new solution. Perhaps at one point in cosmic history, starburst galaxies may have clustered together similar to quasars… locating themselves in the same dark matter halos. As one of the most kinetic forces in our Universe, quasars release intense radiation which is reasoned to be fostered by central black holes. This new evidence suggests intense starburst activity also empowers the quasar by supplying copious amounts of material to the black hole. In response, the quasar then releases a surge of energy which could eradicate the galaxy’s leftover gases. Without this elemental fuel, stars can no longer form and the galaxy growth comes to a halt.

“In short, the galaxies’ glory days of intense star formation also doom them by feeding the giant black hole at their centre, which then rapidly blows away or destroys the star-forming clouds,” explains team member David Alexander from Durham University, UK.

Original Story Source: European Southern Observatory News. For Further Reading: Research Paper Link.

Posted on by Tammy Plotner

Galaxy Interactions Could Cause Overweight Black Holes

Two examples of galaxy pairs in the COSMOS survey (courtesy of the Chandra X-ray Center). The Hubble Space Telescope images show galaxies undergoing a close encounter (shown in gold). X-rays, as detected by Chandra, indicate which of the two galaxies hosts an AGN. In addition, diffuse X-ray emission from hot gas is present thus highlighting that such galaxy associations tend to reside in galaxy groups, an environment of rapid galaxy and black hole growth.

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Yep. It’s true. Almost all galaxies are guilty of having a supermassive black hole in their centers. Some even tip the scales at millions – or even billions – of times more mass than the Sun. However, how they came to be so weighty is a true enigma. Thanks to research done by Dr. John Silverman (IPMU) and the international COSMOS team, the Chandra X-Ray Observatory and the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope have revealed that galaxy interactions may be responsible for the growth of supermassive black holes – and they’ve left behind some very important clues…

If you’re big – you’re big. As a general rule, supermassive black holes like to hang out in massive galaxies. Their mass is usually directly related to the central bulge. Now the consensus is that massive galaxies gained their girth (at least in part) by mergers and interactions with smaller galaxies. This act of cannibalism in galactic evolution has been postulated to explain how matter gathers toward the middle, eventually resulting in a supermassive black hole.

How do we determine this? One way is to take a closer look at galaxies currently in merger as compared to ones in isolation. While the concept is easy, carrying out the test hasn’t been. A supermassive black hole leaves visual observations “blinded by the light” while a quasar can effectively “outshine” an entire host galaxy, leaving an interactor almost impossible to detect. But, like a bulging waistline, such interactions should distort the overall contours of the galaxy.

Now the COSMOS team might have an answer to the riddle.. by assuming a galaxy is interacting if it has a nearby neighbor. It’s a test that can happen without needing to know if distortion is present in optical images. What makes it possible are accurate distance measurements of about 20,000 galaxies in the COSMOS field as provided by the zCOSMOS redshift survey with the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope. Isolated galaxies are used to give a comparison sample to lay the foundation as to whether an active galactic nucleus is common to interacting galaxies. With help from NASA’s Chandra Observatory, X-ray observations pinpoint galaxies which host an AGN. The X-ray emission signature dominates in growing SMBHs and X-rays are capable of cutting through the gas and dust of star-forming regions.

In their report to The Astrophysical Journal the team states that galaxies in close pairs are twice as likely to harbor AGNs as compared to galaxies in isolation. This answer may prove that beginning galaxy interactions can lead to “enhanced black hole growth”. Because it’s not a drastically common occcurrance, it means that only about 20% of SMBHs that break the scale happen via a merger event and that “final coalescence” might also play a role.

One thing we do know is that galaxies and their black holes, like people and their waistlines, all get a little heavier with time.

Original Story Source: Institute for Physics and Mathematics of the Univserse.

Posted on by Jon Voisey

Is M85 Missing a Black Hole?

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The conventional wisdom of galaxies is that they should have a central massive black hole (CMBH). The presence of such objects has been confirmed in our own galaxy as well as numerous other galaxies, including the Andromeda galaxy (M31) and even some dwarf galaxies. The mass of these objects, several million times the mass of the Sun, has been found to be related to many properties of galaxies as a whole, indicating that their presence may be critical in the formation and evolution of galaxies as a whole. As such, finding a massive galaxy without a central black hole would be quite surprising. Yet a recent study by astronomers from the University of Michigan Ann Arbor seems to have found an exception: The well known M85.

To determine the mass of the CMBH, the team used the spectrograph on board the Hubble Space Telescope to examine the pull the central object had on stars in the nearby vicinity. The higher this mass is, the more quickly the stars should orbit. This orbital velocity is detected as a shift in the color of the light, blue as the stars move towards us, red as they move away. The amount the light is shifted is dependent on just how fast they move.

Doppler shift of gas and dust caused by M84's supermassive black hole. Image Credit: Gary Bower, Richard Green (NOAO), the STIS Instrument Definition Team, and NASA
Doppler shift of gas and dust caused by M84's supermassive black hole. Image Credit: Gary Bower, Richard Green (NOAO), the STIS Instrument Definition Team, and NASA
This technique has been used previously in other galaxies, including another large elliptical of similar brightness in the Messier catalog, M84. This galaxy had its CMBH probed by Hubble in 1997 and was determined to have a mass of 300 million solar masses.

When this method was applied to M85 the team did not discover a shift that would be indicative of a black hole with a mass expected for a galaxy of such size. Using another, indirect method of determining the CMBH mass by looking at the the amount of overall light from the galaxy, which is generally correlated with black hole mass, would indicate that M85 should contain a black hole of 300 million to 2 billion solar masses. Yet this study indicates that, if M85 contains a central black hole at all, the upper limit for the black hole would be around 65 million solar masses.

This study is not the first to report a non-detection for the galaxy, a 2009 study led by Alessandro Capetti from Osservatorio Astronoimco di Torino in Italy, searched M85 for signs of radio emission from the black hole region. Their study was unable to detect any significant radio waves from the core which, if M85 had a significant black hole, should be present, even with a small amount of gas feeding into the core.

Overall, these studies demonstrate a significant shortcoming in secondary methods of black hole mass estimation. Such indirect methods have been previously used with confidence and have even been the basis for studies drawing the connection between galaxy evolution and black hole mass. If cases like M85 are more common that previously thought, it may prompt astronomers to rethink just how connected black holes and a galaxies properties really are.

Posted on by Tammy Plotner

Rare New Galaxy Reveals Black Hole Jet Secrets

Composite image of Speca: Optical SDSS image of the galaxies in yellow, low resolution radio image from NVSS in blue, high resolution radio image from GMRT in red. CREDIT: Hota et al., SDSS, NCRA-TIFR, NRAO/AUI/NSF.

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A newly discovered galaxy is aiding astronomers in the research into the early evolution of individual galaxies and galaxy clusters. Named Speca, this unique finding is only the second spiral galaxy known to produce “jets” – streams of subatomic particles emitted from the nucleus. What’s more, it’s also one of two which shows this activity happened in separate intervals.

As astronomers know, galaxy jets are formed at the heart of activity where a supermassive black hole is present. While both elliptical and spiral galaxies have known supermassive black holes, only one had been known to produce copious amounts of material from its poles – Messier 87. Now Speca is changing the way researchers look for recurring activity.

“This is probably the most exotic galaxy with a black hole ever seen. It has the potential to teach us new lessons about how galaxies and clusters of galaxies formed and developed into what we see today,” said Ananda Hota, of the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics (ASIAA), in Taiwan.

Located in a galaxy cluster about 1.7 billion light-years, Speca (an acronym for Spiral-host Episodic radio galaxy tracing Cluster Accretion) made its presence known to Ananda’s researches via an image which joined data from the visible-light Sloan Digital Sky Survey and the FIRST survey done with the National Science Foundation’s Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope. Subsequent observations with the Lulin optical telescope in Taiwan and ultraviolet data from NASA’s GALEX satellite verified the lobes of material were part of an active, star-forming galaxy. Ananda’s team further refined their studies with information from the NRAO VLA Sky Survey (NVSS), then made new observations with the Giant Meterwave Radio Telescope (GMRT) in India. Each telescope set provided more and more clues to solving the puzzle.

“By using these multiple sets of data, we found clear evidence for three distinct epochs of jet activity,” Ananda explained. But the real excitement began when the low-frequency nature of the oldest, outermost lobes was examined. It was an artifact which should have disappeared with time.

“We think these old, relic lobes have been ‘re-lighted’ by shock waves from rapidly moving material falling into the cluster of galaxies as the cluster continues to accrete matter,” said Ananda. “All these phenomena combined in one galaxy make Speca and its neighbors a valuable laboratory for studying how galaxies and clusters evolved billions of years ago.”

Sandeep K. Sirothia of India’s National Centre for Radio Astrophysics, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (NCRA-TIFR) said, “The ongoing low-frequency TIFR GMRT Sky Survey will find many more relic radio lobes of past black hole activity and energetic phenomena in clusters of galaxies like those we found in Speca.” Also, Govind Swarup of NCRA-TIFR, who is not part of the team, described the finding as “an outstanding discovery that is very important for cluster formation models and highlights the importance of sensitive observations at meter wavelengths provided by the GMRT.”

Stay close to your radio, folks… Who knows what we’ll hear in the future!

Original Story Source: National Radio Astronomy Observatory News.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Astronomy Cast Ep. 213: Supermassive Black Holes

Supermassive Black Hole

It’s now believed that there’s a supermassive black hole lurking at the heart of every galaxy in the Universe. These monstrous black holes can contain hundreds of millions of times the mass of our own Sun, with event horizons better than the Solar System. They’re the source of the most energetic particles in the Universe, the brightest objects in the Universe, and the place where the laws of physics go to get mangled.

Click here to download the episode.

Or subscribe to: astronomycast.com/podcast.xml with your podcatching software.

Supermassive Black Holes shownotes and transcript.

Posted on by Nicholos Wethington

Galactic Mergers Fail to Feed Black Holes

By comparing 140 galaxies that had Active Galactic Nuclei with over 1200 galaxies in a "control group", the likelihood that mergers are the cause of AGN has been brought into doubt. Credit: NASA, ESA, M. Cisternas (Max-Planck Institute for Astronomy)

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The large black holes that reside at the center of galaxies can be hungry beasts. As dust and gas are forced into the vicinity around the black holes, it crowds up and jostles together, emitting lots of heat and light. But what forces that gas and dust the last few light years into the maw of these supermassive black holes?

It has been theorized that mergers between galaxies disturbs the gas and dust in a galaxy, and forces the matter into the immediate neighborhood of the black hole. That is, until a recent study of 140 galaxies hosting Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) – another name for active black holes at the center of galaxies – provided strong evidence that many of the galaxies containing these AGN show no signs of past mergers.

The study was performed by an international team of astronomers. Mauricio Cisternas of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy and his team used data from 140 galaxies that were imaged by the XMM-Newton X-ray observatory. The galaxies they sampled had a redshift between z= 0.3 – 1, which means that they are between about 4 and 8 billion light-years away (and thus, the light we see from them is about 4-8 billion years old).

They didn’t just look at the images of the galaxies in question, though; a bias towards classifying those galaxies that show active nuclei to be more distorted from mergers might creep in. Rather, they created a “control group” of galaxies, using images of inactive galaxies from the same redshift as the AGN host galaxies. They took the images from the Cosmic Evolution Survey (COSMOS), a survey of a large region of the sky in multiple wavelengths of light. Since these galaxies were from the same redshift as the ones they wanted to study, they show the same stage in galactic evolution. In all, they had 1264 galaxies in their comparison sample.

The way they designed the study involved a tenet of science that is not normally used in the field of astronomy: the blind study. Cisternas and his team had 9 comparison galaxies – which didn’t contain AGN – of the same redshift for each of their 140 galaxies that showed signs of having an active nucleus.

What they did next was remove any sign of the bright active nucleus in the image. This means that the galaxies in their sample of 140 galaxies with AGN would essentially appear to even a trained eye as a galaxy without the telltale signs of an AGN. They then submitted the control galaxies and the altered AGN images to ten different astronomers, and asked them to classify them all as “distorted”, “moderately distorted”, or “not distorted”.

Since their sample size was pretty manageable, and the distortion in many of the galaxies would be too subtle for a computer to recognize, the pattern-seeking human brain was their image analysis tool of choice. This may sound familiar – something similar is being done with enormous success with people who are amateur galaxy classifiers at Galaxy Zoo.

When a galaxy merges with another galaxy, the merger distorts its shape in ways that are identifiable – it will warp a normally smooth elliptical galaxy out of shape, and if the galaxy is a spiral the arms seem to be a bit “unwound”. If it were the case that galactic mergers are the most likely cause of AGN, then those galaxies with an active nucleus would be more probable to show distortion from this past merger.

The team went through this process of blinding the study to eliminate any bias that those looking at the images would have towards classifying AGN as more distorted. By both having a reasonably large sample size of galaxies and removing any bias when analyzing the images, they hoped to definitively show whether the correlation between AGN and mergers exists.

The result? Those galaxies with an Active Galactic Nucleus did not show any more distortion on the whole than those galaxies in the comparison sample. As the authors state in the paper, “Mergers and interactions involving AGN hosts are not dominant, and occur no more frequently than for inactive galaxies.”

This means that astronomers can’t point towards galactic mergers as the main reason for AGN. The study showed that at least 75% of AGN creation – at least between the last 4-8 billion years – must be from sources other than galactic mergers. Likely candidates for these sources include: “galactic harrassment”, those galaxies that don’t collide, but come close enough to gravitationally influence each other; the instability of the central bar in a galaxy; or the collision of giant molecular clouds within the galaxy.

Knowing that AGN aren’t caused in large part by galactic mergers will help astronomers to better understand the formation and evolution of galaxies. The active nuclei in galaxies that host them greatly influence galactic formation. This process is called ‘AGN feedback’, and the mechanisms and effects that result from the interplay between the energy streaming out of the AGN and the surrounding material in the center of a galaxy is still a hot topic of study in astronomy.

Mergers in the more distant past than 8 billion years might yet correlate with AGN – this study only rules out a certain population of these galaxies – and this is a question that the team plans to take on next, pending surveys by the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope. Their study will be published in the January 10 issue of the Astrophysical Journal, and a pre-print version is available on Arxiv.

Source: HST news release, Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Arxiv paper

Posted on by Nicholos Wethington

Taking a Galaxy’s Temperature

The image above shows the variation in temperature over the span of NGC 5813. The outline encircles a region 367,000 light years in diameter, and the temperatures indicated are in millions of degrees. Red indicates warmer temperatures, blue cooler. This image uses information from the Chandra X-Ray Observatory and optical imaging from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). Image Credit: Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/S.Randall et al., Optical: SDSS

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The role that supermassive black holes play in the formation of galaxies is a “hot” topic in astronomy. Using the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, an international team of astronomers have been able to create a temperature map of one galaxy, NGC 5813, which is located in the Virgo III Group of galaxies. The new map shows in unprecedented detail the history of various periods of activity of the Active Galactic Nucleus (AGN), which is associated with a supermassive black hole that resides at its center. They found that regular outbursts of the AGN maintained the temperature of the gas in the region of the galaxy, continually reheating the gas that would otherwise have cooled down.

Paper co-author Dr. Scott Randall of the Chandra Mission Planning Team at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics said, “Although there are other systems that show AGN outburst shocks, this is still the only system where unambiguous shocks from multiple outbursts are seen. This allows us to directly measure the heating from shocks, and directly observe how often these shocks take place. Thus, at present NGC 5813 is *uniquely* well suited to the study of AGN heating.”

By studying images taken by the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, and combining these observations with those taken by the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) and the Southern Astrophysical Research Telescope (SOAR), they were able to make out large cavities produced by periods of activity in the supermassive black hole. The researchers were able to determine that there were three pairs of large cavities, which corresponded to active outbursts of the galactic nucleus 3 million, 20 million and 90 million years ago (from our perspective here on Earth).

What makes the galaxy NGC 5813 especially suited to this study is its relative isolation from other galaxies that could influence the formation of these cavities – it is an older galaxy that is relatively undisturbed, allowing for these cavities in the gas to persist over such a long time period.

Current models of galaxy formation must take into account just how much of an influence the output of the supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy has on the formation of stars within the galaxy, and the evolution of the shape and size of the galaxy as a whole. This process of “AGN feedback” has a dramatic influence on how the galaxy takes shape. The research by Dr. Randall, et. al shows an intimate portrait of this process.

Dr. Randall explained, “This is an important result for stellar formation and galaxy evolution. The AGN heats the gas, preventing it from cooling and forming large amounts of stars. There have been several galaxy evolution models proposed that require this kind of “AGN feedback” near the centers of galaxies to explain the observed differences in galaxies. Here we show explicitly that this kind of feedback can and does take place, at least in this system.”

A labeled image of the various shock waves and cavities formed by the activity of the AGN. Image Credit: Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO/S.Randall et al.

As you can see in the image directly above, various outbursts of the AGN create shock waves in the gas near the center of the galaxy. As these shock waves expanded and the galaxy evolved over millions of years, the heat generated by the shocks spread outwards and into the gas surrounding NGC 5813. The gas between all of the galaxies in a cluster is called the intracluster medium (ICM). The heat – which is produced by the friction of the gases at the edge of each of the shock waves – radiates outward into the surrounding gas, increasing its temperature.

The output of the jets streaming from the supermassive black hole in the center vary over a span of roughly 10 million years, and the amount of energy that each outburst puts out is rather variable – the difference between the last two largest outbursts, for example, is almost an order of magnitude.

This process is cyclical, though the details of the mechanisms involved are still a topic that isn’t completely understood.

Dr. Randall explained this process as follows:

“…the gas cools radiatively, and flows in towards the AGN. The cool gas is rapidly accreted by the black hole, dirving [sic] an energetic outburst. The outburst heats the gas (via shocks), stopping the inflow and starving the AGN. The gas is then able to cool once more, and the cycle repeats, with, in this case, a period of about 10 million years. However, the fine details of how the jet and the ICM interact are not currently well uderstood [sic], and it is not clear how well this simple model describes reality. Our goal with the upcoming deep Chandra observation is to better understand the details of this process, most likely through comparisons with detailed numerical simulations.”

Further observations of NGC 5813 in the fall of 2011 using Chandra are in the works, Dr. Randall said. The results of their analysis will be published in the Astrophysical Journal. A preprint version of the paper, “Shocks and Cavities from Multiple Outbursts in the Galaxy Group NGC 5813: A Window to AGN Feedback,” is available on Arxiv.

Sources: Chandra press release, Arxiv paper, email interview with Dr. Scott Randall

Posted on by Steve Nerlich

Astronomy Without A Telescope – Black Hole Evolution

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While only observable by inference, the existence of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) at the centre of most – if not all – galaxies remains a compelling theory supported by a range of indirect observational methods. Within these data sources, there exists a strong correlation between the mass of the galactic bulge of a galaxy and the mass of its central SMBH – meaning that smaller galaxies have smaller SMBHs and bigger galaxies have bigger SMBHs.

Linked to this finding is the notion that SMBHs may play an intrinsic role in galaxy formation and evolution – and might have even been the first step in the formation of the earliest galaxies in the universe, including the proto-Milky Way.

Now, there are a number of significant assumptions built into this line of thinking, since the mass of a galactic bulge is generally inferred from the velocity dispersion of its stars – while the presence of supermassive black holes in the centre of such bulges is inferred from the very fast radial motion of inner stars – at least in closer galaxies where we can observe individual stars.

For galaxies too far away to observe individual stars – the velocity dispersion and the presence of a central supermassive black hole are both inferred – drawing on the what we have learnt from closer galaxies, as well as from direct observations of broad emission lines – which are interpreted as the product of very rapid orbital movement of gas around an SMBH (where the ‘broadening’ of these lines is a result of the Doppler effect).

But despite the assumptions built on assumptions nature of this work, ongoing observations continue to support and hence strengthen the theoretical model. So, with all that said – it seems likely that, rather than depleting its galactic bulge to grow, both an SMBH and the galactic bulge of its host galaxy grow in tandem.

It is speculated that the earliest galaxies, which formed in a smaller, denser universe, may have started with the rapid aggregation of gas and dust, which evolved into massive stars, which evolved into black holes – which then continued to grow rapidly in size due to the amount of surrounding gas and dust they were able to accrete.

Distant quasars may be examples of such objects which have grown to a galactic scale. However, this growth becomes self-limiting as radiation pressure from an SMBH’s accretion disk and its polar jets becomes intense enough to push large amounts of gas and dust out beyond the growing SMBH’s sphere of influence. That dispersed material contains vestiges of angular momentum to keep it in an orbiting halo around the SMBH and it is in these outer regions that star formation is able to take place. Thus a dynamic balance is reached where the more material an SMBH eats, the more excess material it blows out – contributing to the growth of the galaxy that is forming around it.

The almost linear correlation between the SMBH mass (M) and velocity dispersion (sigma) of the galactic bulge (the 'M-sigma relation') suggests that there is some kind of co-evolution going on between an SMBH and its host galaxy. The only way an SMBH can get bigger is if its host galaxy gets bigger - and vice versa. The left chart shows data points derived from different objects in a galaxy - the right chart shows data points derived from different types of galaxies. Credit: Tremaine et al. (2002).

To further investigate the evolution of the relationship between SMBHs and their host galaxies – Nesvadba et al looked at a collection of very red-shifted (and hence very distant) radio galaxies (or HzRGs). They speculate that their selected group of galaxies have reached a critical point – where the feeding frenzy of the SMBH is blowing out about as much material as it is taking in – a point which probably represents the limit of the active growth of the SMBH and its host galaxy.

From that point, such galaxies might grow further by cannibalistic merging – but again this may lead to a co-evolution of the galaxy and the SMBH – as much of the contents of the galaxy being eaten gets used up in star formation within the feasting galaxy’s disk and bulge, before whatever is left gets through to feed the central SMBH.

Other authors (e.g. Schulze and Gebhardt), while not disputing the general concept, suggest that all the measurements are a bit out as a result of not incorporating dark matter into the theoretical model. But, that is another story…

Further reading: Nesvadba et al. The black holes of radio galaxies during the “Quasar Era”: Masses, accretion rates, and evolutionary stage.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Retro Black Holes Are More Powerful

This artist's concept shows a galaxy with a supermassive black hole at its core. The black hole is shooting out jets of radio waves.Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

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Black holes seem to defy our comprehension and be contrary to conventional understanding. So perhaps it is not entirely surprising to find that supermassive black holes which have a retrograde or backwards spin might be more powerful and produce more ferocious jets of gas. While this new finding goes against what astronomers had thought for decades, it also helps solve a mystery why some black holes have no jets at all.

Powerful jets stream out from the accretion disks that spin around many supermassive black holes. The black holes can spin either in the same direction as the disks, called prograde black holes, or against the flow – the retrograde black holes. For decades, astronomers thought that the faster the spin of the black hole, the more powerful the jet. But there were problems with this “spin paradigm” model. For example, some prograde black holes had been found with no jets.

Theoretical astrophysicist David Garofalo and his colleagues have been studying the motion of black holes for years, and in previous papers, they proposed that the backward, or retrograde, black holes spew the most powerful jets, while the prograde black holes have weaker or no jets.

Their new study links their theory with observations of galaxies across time, or at varying distances from Earth. They looked at both “radio-loud” galaxies with jets, and “radio-quiet” ones with weak or no jets. The term “radio” comes from the fact that these particular jets shoot out beams of light mostly in the form of radio waves.

The results showed that more distant radio-loud galaxies are powered by retrograde black holes, while relatively closer radio-quiet objects have prograde black holes. According to the team, the supermassive black holes evolve over time from a retrograde to a prograde state.

“This new model also solves a paradox in the old spin paradigm,” said David Meier, a theoretical astrophysicist at JPL not involved in the study. “Everything now fits nicely into place.”

The scientists say that the backward black holes shoot more powerful jets because there’s more space between the black hole and the inner edge of the orbiting disk. This gap provides more room for the build-up of magnetic fields, which fuel the jets, an idea known as the Reynold’s conjecture after the theoretical astrophysicist Chris Reynolds of the University of Maryland, College Park.

“If you picture yourself trying to get closer to a fan, you can imagine that moving in the same rotational direction as the fan would make things easier,” said Garofalo. “The same principle applies to these black holes. The material orbiting around them in a disk will get closer to the ones that are spinning in the same direction versus the ones spinning the opposite way.”

Jets and winds play key roles in shaping the fate of galaxies. Some research shows that jets can slow and even prevent the formation of stars not just in a host galaxy itself, but also in other nearby galaxies.

“Jets transport huge amounts of energy to the outskirts of galaxies, displace large volumes of the intergalactic gas, and act as feedback agents between the galaxy’s very center and the large-scale environment,” said team member Rita M. Sambruna, from Goddard Space Flight Center. “Understanding their origin is of paramount interest in modern astrophysics.”

The team’s paper was published in the May 27 Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Source: JPL

Posted on by Nicholos Wethington

Andromeda’s Unstable Black Hole

The Andromeda galaxy as seen in optical light, and Chandra's X-ray vision of the changing supermassive black hole in Andromeda's heart. Image Credit: X-Ray NASA/CXC/SAO/Li et al.), Optical (DSS)

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The Andromeda galaxy, the closest spiral galaxy to our own Milky Way, has a supermassive blackhole at the center of it much like other galaxies. Because of its proximity to us, Andromeda – or M31 – is an excellent place to study just how the supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies consume material to grow, and interact gravitationally with the surrounding material.

Over the course of the last ten years, NASA’s Chandra X-Ray observatory has monitored closely the supermassive black hole at Andromeda’s heart. This long-term data set gives astronomers a very nuanced picture of just how these monstrous black holes change over time. Zhiyuan Li of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) presented results of this decade-long observation of the black hole at the 216th American Astronomical Society meeting in Miami, Florida this week.

From 1999 to 2006, M31 was relatively quiet and dim. In January of 2006, though, the black hole in the center of Andromeda suddenly brightened by over 100 times, and has remained 10 times as bright since. This suggests that the black hole swallowed something massive, but the details of the outburst in 2006 remain unclear.

The black hole in M31, located in the Andromeda constellation, likely continues to feed off of the stellar winds of a nearby star or the material in a large gas cloud that is falling into the black hole. As material is consumed, it drives the productions of X-rays in a relativistic jet streaming out from the black hole, which are then picked up by Chandra’s X-ray eyes.

The black hole in M31 is 10 to 100,000 times dimmer than expected, given that it has a large reservoir of gas surrounding it.

“The black holes in both Andromeda and the Milky Way are incredibly feeble. These two ‘anti-quasars’ provide special laboratories for us to study some of the dimmest type of accretion even seen onto a supermassive black hole,” Li said.

Accretion of matter into supermassive black holes is important to study because the evolution of galaxies is influenced by this process, Li said. The gravitational interplay of the black hole with the surrounding material in a galaxy, as well as the energy released when such supermassive black holes consume material in their surrounding accretion disks, change the structure of the galaxy as it forms. A better understanding of just how these supermassive black holes act in the later stages of spiral galaxy life may give clues as to what astronomers can expect to see in other galaxies.

M31 is readily seen with the naked eye in the constellation Andromeda, and is breathtaking to see through a telescope or binoculars. You won’t be able to see the black hole at its center, however! For more information on observing Andromeda, see our Guide to Space article on M31.

Source: Eurekalert