Galaxy Survives Black Hole’s Feast – “Goes Against All the Current Scientific Predictions”

Galaxy CQ4479

Illustration of the galaxy called CQ4479. The extremely active black hole at the galaxy’s center is consuming material so fast that the material is glowing as it spins into the black hole’s center, forming a luminous quasar. Quasars create intense energy that was thought to halt all star birth and drive a lethal blow to a galaxy’s growth. But SOFIA found that the galaxy CQ4479 is surviving these monstrous forces, holding on to enough cold gas, shown around the edges in brown, to birth about 100 Sun-sized stars a year, shown in blue. The discovery is causing scientists to re-think their theories of galactic evolution. Credit: NASA/ Daniel Rutter

The hungriest of black holes are thought to gobble up so much surrounding material they put an end to the life of their host galaxy. This feasting process is so intense that it creates a highly energetic object called a quasar – one of the brightest objects in the universe – as the spinning matter is sucked into the black hole’s belly. Now, researchers have found a galaxy that is surviving the black hole’s ravenous forces by continuing to birth new stars – about 100 Sun-sized stars a year.

The discovery from NASA’s telescope on an airplane, the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, can help explain how massive galaxies came to be, even though the universe today is dominated by galaxies that no longer form stars. The results are published in the Astrophysical Journal.

“This shows us that the growth of active black holes doesn’t stop star birth instantaneously, which goes against all the current scientific predictions,” said Allison Kirkpatrick, assistant professor at the University of Kansas in Lawrence Kansas and co-author on the study. “It’s causing us to re-think our theories on how galaxies evolve.”

NASA SOFIA

SOFIA soars over the snow-covered Sierra Nevada mountains with its telescope door open during a test flight. SOFIA is a modified Boeing 747SP aircraft. Credit: NASA/Jim Ross

SOFIA, a joint project of NASA and the German Aerospace Center, DLR, studied an extremely distant galaxy, located more than 5.25 billion light years away called CQ4479. At its core is a special type of quasar that was recently discovered by Kirkpatrick called a “cold quasar.” In this kind of quasar, the active black hole is still feasting on material from its host galaxy, but the quasar’s intense energy has not ravaged all of the cold gas, so stars can keep forming and the galaxy lives on. This is the first time researchers have a detailed look at a cold quasar, directly measuring the black hole’s growth, star birth rate, and how much cold gas remains to fuel the galaxy.

“We were surprised to see another oddball galaxy that defies current theories,” said Kevin Cooke, postdoctoral researcher at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas, and lead author of this study. “If this tandem growth continues both the black hole and the stars surrounding it would triple in mass before the galaxy reaches the end of its life.”

HAWC+ SOFIA

An infrared camera called the High-resolution Airborne Wideband Camera-Plus (HAWC+), was installed on the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, SOFIA, in 2016. This astronomical camera makes images using far-infrared light, allowing studies of low-temperature early stages of star and planet formation. HAWC+ includes a polarimeter, a device that measures the alignment of incoming light waves. With the polarimeter, HAWC+ can map magnetic fields in star-forming regions and in the environment around the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. These new maps can reveal how the strength and direction of magnetic fields affect the rate at which interstellar clouds condense to form new stars. A team led by C. Darren Dowell at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and including participants from more than a dozen institutions developed the instrument. Credit: NASA

As one of the brightest and most distant objects in the universe, quasars, or “quasi-stellar radio sources,” are notoriously difficult to observe because they often outshine everything around them. They form when an especially active black hole consumes huge amounts of material from its surrounding galaxy, creating strong gravitational forces. As more and more material spins faster and faster toward the center of the black hole, the material heats up and glows brightly. A quasar produces so much energy that it often outshines everything around it, blinding attempts to observe its host galaxy. Current theories predict that this energy heats up or expels the cold gas needed to create stars, stopping star birth and driving a lethal blow to a galaxy’s growth. But SOFIA reveals there is a relatively short period when the galaxy’s star birth can continue while the black hole’s feast goes on powering the quasar’s powerful forces.

Rather than directly observing the newborn stars, SOFIA used its 9-foot telescope to detect the infrared light radiating from the dust heated by the process of star formation. Using data collected by SOFIA’s High-resolution Airborne Wideband Camera-Plus, or HAWC+ instrument, scientists were able to estimate the amount of star formation over the past 100 million years.

“SOFIA lets us see into this brief window of time where the two processes can co-exist,” said Cooke. “It’s the only telescope capable of studying star birth in this galaxy without being overwhelmed by the intensely luminous quasar.”

The short window of joint black hole and star growth represents an early phase in the death of a galaxy, wherein the galaxy has not yet succumbed to the devastating effects of the quasar. Continued research with SOFIA is needed to learn if many other galaxies go through a similar stage with joint black hole and star growth before ultimately reaching the end of life. Future observations with the James Webb Space Telescope, which is scheduled to launch in 2021, could uncover how quasars affect the overall shape of their host galaxies.

Reference: “Dying of the Light: An X-Ray Fading Cold Quasar at z ~ 0.405” by Kevin C. Cooke, Allison Kirkpatrick, Michael Estrada, Hugo Messias, Alessandro Peca, Nico Cappelluti, Tonima Tasnim Ananna, Jason Brewster, Eilat Glikman, Stephanie LaMassa, T. K. Daisy Leung, Jonathan R. Trump, Tracey Jane Turner and C. Megan Urry, 6 November 2020, The Astrophysical Journal.
DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/abb94a

SOFIA is a joint project of NASA and the German Aerospace Center. NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley manages the SOFIA program, science, and mission operations in cooperation with the Universities Space Research Association, headquartered in Columbia, Maryland, and the German SOFIA Institute at the University of Stuttgart. The aircraft is maintained and operated by NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center Building 703, in Palmdale, California. The HAWC+ instrument was developed and delivered to NASA by a multi-institution team led by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

11 Comments on "Galaxy Survives Black Hole’s Feast – “Goes Against All the Current Scientific Predictions”"

  1. Howard Jeffrey Bender | December 1, 2020 at 5:36 am | Reply

    For these kinds of galaxies, where the active center is far enough away from the cold gas surrounding it to permit continued star formation, makes us wonder what the Black Hole is consuming that causes it to be so bright. One view of String Theory suggests that active galaxies, including radio galaxies, Seyfert galaxies, and Quasars, may be explained using branes rather than Black Holes. Specifics can be found in my YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mf3QSEFVSZE&t=8s

    • Torbjörn Larsson | December 1, 2020 at 9:03 am | Reply

      That reference is overt self promotion.

      The article science does not need other “suggestions” than quasar physics and the majority of the science on quasars don’t entertain such “suggestions” any longer – it is not an active open question.

      “A quasar (/ˈkweɪzɑːr/; also known as a quasi-stellar object, abbreviated QSO) is an extremely luminous active galactic nucleus (AGN), in which a supermassive black hole with mass ranging from millions to billions of times the mass of the Sun is surrounded by a gaseous accretion disk. As gas in the disk falls towards the black hole, energy is released in the form of electromagnetic radiation, which can be observed across the electromagnetic spectrum.” [“Quasar” @ Wikipedia]

    • Torbjörn Larsson | December 1, 2020 at 9:10 am | Reply

      Also, the article doesn’t suggest that the observation is caused by any “far enough” distance but simply that it takes some time for the black hole radiation to heat the surrounding, infalling gas. It is an ordinary quasar caught in an extraordinary time of its life.

  2. Torbjörn Larsson | December 1, 2020 at 9:06 am | Reply

    Nice find!

    The press release is a bit of an oversell if “the short window of joint black hole and star growth” isn’t so rare that the observation is somehow in question solely on that basis. But it doesn’t seem to be.

  3. you telling me that you can look at something that happened 5 1/4 billion years ago (I assume that is how long it takes light to get here) and explain that it’s happening today how???

    • It is understood that everything we perceive in the universe has occurred in the past, from our unique reference frame. (Even your reflection when looking in a mirror is how you looked in the past…) Since we are seeing the light from this phenomenon now, then it is real for us right now so we describe it as happening today.

  4. [My comment does not necessarily conform to current cosmological theory.] When a galaxy consumes mass and creates a Quasar, it is ejecting a portion of the incoming mass (up to 40% by some models) and spewing it into intergalactic space at relativistic velocities. This phenomenon reduces the overall gravity (mass) at the center of the galaxy which in turn causes the incoming mass to become orbitally stabilized and allows incoming gas and dust to concentrate; this phenomenon may create a stable environment conducive to star formation. Quasar activity may actually promote galactic star formation.

  5. Sekar Vedaraman | December 1, 2020 at 4:29 pm | Reply

    Interesting.

    Some Thoughts For Consideration.

    1. It maybe that the Galaxy may be in equilibrium as far as the Gravitational Forces is concerned with the Pull of the Black Hole.

    2. Maybe Galaxy’s can also travel through Space and this one may have sufficient Gravitational Force to Counter the Pull of the Black Hole and reach a state of Equilibrium for now, and continue to birth new stars. It may eventually be consumed by the Balck Hole, once its Gravitational Force Probably used up in Giving Birth to Stars uses up its energy.

    3. On a Facetious note, reminds me of the birthing of a new Child by a Mother. The mid-wife and nowadays doctors and Nurses advise the Pregnant Mother ” Push” , ” Push” — when she is undergoing Labour Pain and the Child exits from the Womb of the mother, creating a new Galaxy (Female ) or the Seed Carrying Galaxy with creation creation ability (Sperm), which impregnates other Galaxys when Galaxy’s Crash against Each Other!! Just a Crazy Hypothesis for Consideration!

  6. If 100 sun-sized stars are forming each year in that galaxy, and if an appropriate number of those stars have potentially life-bearing planets orbiting them, what effect on any life that arises on those planets is the radiation from that quasar having? Any quasar that is visible from 5.2 thousand million light years away is going to be lethal to life in its home galaxy.

  7. People look up on space weather then next enter the website called homepage NOAA/NWS Space weather prediction center then next click on Coronal mass ejections it would show exact same date 2020/12/02 or 03 and press play then you could tell that theirs a black hole out their right bellow of the sun it looks very small beside compare to 4.2 millions times the size of the sun but it’s not that size.

  8. Watch this not going to happen all along that world is not going to end im 100% sure that it’s not end of us people that we wiil make it to new years eve 2021 this whole thing it’s to damn unnacceptable of fake proof by atromoners of black holes.

Leave a Reply to tag Cancel reply

Email address is optional. If provided, your email will not be published or shared.