Did the merging of giant protogalaxies give birth to black holes?
AUG 26, 2010
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.024619
SPACE.com : Supermassive black holes are thought to lie at the center of almost every galaxy. Contrary to previous research, scientists are now coming to believe that they formed relatively quicklyâmdash;less than a billion years after the Big Bang, which occurred 13.7 billion years ago. According to Stelios Kazantzidis, an astronomer at Ohio State University, whose team’s results were published today in Nature, black holes may have formed from mergers between giant protogalaxies. Their findings could alter current theories on the evolution of black holes and galaxies; for example, rather than the galaxy regulating the growth of the black hole, as previously thought, it could be the other way roundâmdash;the black hole regulates the growth of the galaxy.
© 2010 American Institute of Physics
