The cosmic seeds of black holes

Monday, January 19, 2015 - 07:30 in Astronomy & Space

Supermassive black holes with millions or billions of solar-masses of material are found at the nuclei of most galaxies. During the embryonic stages of these galaxies they are thought to play an important role, acting as seeds around which material collected. During the later lifetime of galaxies they can power dramatic outflowing jets of material (among other phenomena) as infalling dust and gas accretes onto the disks that typically surround them. These active, later phases of supermassive black holes can result in turning galaxies into an extremely bright objects like quasars, whose luminosities allow them to be seen at cosmic distances. In fact, quasars have recently been detected from eras less than a billion years after the big bang.

Read the whole article on Physorg

More from Physorg

Latest Science Newsletter

Get the latest and most popular science news articles of the week in your Inbox! It's free!

Check out our next project, Biology.Net