As far as scientists know, black holes are usually doing their job outrageously well. Due to their infinite gravity, they even ruin the job of other cosmic objects once and for all. Entire stars and planets that get too close to a black hole will be guzzled by the dark cosmic monster without remorse or explanation.
NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and also other telescopes revealed an amazing thing that occurs while a black hole hesitates to devour a galaxy cluster.
Star formation occurring due to passive black hole
Scientists now suspect that the behavior of the job quitting black hole could explain a torrent of star formation that emerges in a distant cluster of galaxies. The Chandra X-ray Observatory also published a relevant video for their new hypothesis:
The galaxy cluster SpARCS104922.6+564032.5 (SpARCS1049 for short) is the one in question, and it’s located 9.9 billion light-years away from our planet. This means that the cluster was present when the Universe was very young – only 3.9 billion years old. While the world has no guarantee that the SpARCS1049 galaxy cluster still exists, the cosmic objects still provide great insight into how things work at a major cosmic scale.
Co-author Carter Rhea, who also works at the University of Montreal, explained how such a cosmic phenomenon could be possible:
Without the black hole actively pumping energy into its surroundings, the gas can cool enough so this impressive rate of star formation can happen,
This kind of black hole shut down may be a crucial way for stars to form in the early Universe.
Galaxy clusters are the largest objects in the Universe that are held together by gravity. They are made of dark matter, hot gas, and of course: galaxies.
A paper describing the new results was published within The Astrophysical Journal Letters, and you can check it out here.
