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Scientists: Black hole helps spawn stars
(AP)
Updated: 2005-10-14 09:13 Astronomers say the
mysterious, massive black hole in the center of the Milky Way helped give birth
to new stars, challenging earlier theories that black holes are solely
destructive forces.
Scientists peering through NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory found that disks
of gas near the black hole actually helped spawn a new generation of stars.
Their observations, announced Thursday, will be published in a future issue
of the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
"Massive black holes are usually known for violence and destruction," said
Sergei Nayakshin of the University of Leicester in England, who made the
discovery. "So it's remarkable that this black hole helped create new stars, not
just destroy them."
Black holes are believed to be the invisible remains of collapsed stars with
gravitational pull so powerful not even light can escape the vortex.
This Jekyll-and-Hyde nature suggested by the new discovery may help
scientists understand the physics of black holes, said Sterl Phinney, a
professor of theoretical astrophysics at the California Institute of Technology
in Pasadena, who was not part of the study.
Astronomers believe the gravity of the gas disk helped offset the tidal force
of the black hole in a tug-of-war that allowed the stars to form.
Scientists have ruled out the possibility that a star cluster formed far away
and somehow migrated near the black hole. Some 10,000 low-mass stars formed near
the black hole. If there had been a migration, scientists surmised they would
have found at least a million such stars.
The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy, a cluster of stars with a black hole in the
center and bending arms spreading out from the core. The solar system,
containing the Earth and other planets, is on one of the spiral arms.
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