Astrophysicists discover new heating source in cosmological structure formation

(Phys.org) -- So far, astrophysicists thought that super-massive black holes can only influence their immediate surroundings. A collaboration of scientists at the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies (HITS) and in Canada and the US now discovered that diffuse gas in the universe can absorb luminous gamma-ray emission from black holes, heating it up strongly. This surprising result has important implications for the formation of structures in the universe. The results have just been published in The Astrophysical Journal and Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

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