Powerful Quasar Tsunamis Can Prevent Stars From Forming

Eddie Gonzales Jr. – MessageToEagle.com – Hubble astronomers led by Virginia Tech’s Nahum Arav has discovered the most energetic outflows ever witnessed in the universe.

They found that the region around the black hole emits so much radiation that it pushes out material at a few percent the speed of light (a speed fast enough to travel from Earth to the Moon in a few minutes)

This material slams into a host galaxy’s lanes of gas and dust, preventing the formation of new stars. The torrential winds are snowplowing the equivalent of hundreds of solar masses of material each year. And, the forecast is that this stormy weather will continue for at least ten million years.

“The outflows emanate from quasars and tear across interstellar space similar to tsunamis on Earth, wreaking havoc on the galaxies in which the quasars reside. Quasars are the brilliant, compact cores of distant galaxies that can shine 1,000 times brighter than their host galaxies of hundreds of millions of stars. Their central engines are supermassive black holes that are engorged with infalling dust, gas, and stars,” said Arav, a professor in the Department of Physics, part of the Virginia Tech College of Science.

Quasars are created when a black hole devours matter, thus emitting intense radiation. Driven by the blistering radiation pressure from the black hole, concussive blasts push material away from the galaxy’s center into outflows that accelerate to breathtaking velocities that are a few percent of the speed of light, Arav said.

“These outflows are crucial for the understanding of galaxies’ formation,” Arav said. “They are pushing hundreds of solar masses of material each year. The amount of mechanical energy that these outflows carry is up to several hundreds of times higher than the luminosity of the entire Milky Way galaxy.”

The quasar winds disseminate across the galaxy’s disc, violently sweeping material that otherwise would have formed new stars. Radiation pushes the gas and dust for far greater distances than scientists previously thought, creating a galaxy-wide event, according to the study.

As this cosmic tsunami slams into interstellar material, its temperature spikes to billions of degrees, where material glows largely in X-rays, but also widely across the light spectrum. Anyone witnessing this event would see a fantastic show of fireworks.

“You’ll get lots of radiation first in X-rays and gamma rays, and afterward it will percolate to visible and infrared light,” Arav said. “You’d get a huge light show, like Christmas trees all over the galaxy.”

Simulations suggest that such outflows can explain some important cosmological puzzles, such as why astronomers observe so few large galaxies in the universe and why there is a relationship between the mass of the galaxy and the mass of its central black hole. This study shows that such powerful quasar outflows should be prevalent in the early universe.

Aside from measuring the most energetic quasars ever observed, the team also discovered another outflow accelerating faster than any other. The outflow increased from nearly 43 million miles per hour to roughly 46 million miles per hour in a three-year period.

The scientists believe its acceleration will continue to increase as time passes.

Written by Eddie Gonzales Jr. – MessageToEagle.com Staff