New Delhi: When most people think of supermassive black holes, they think of large, destructive forces sucking up everything which gets in its field of gravity. However, researches have now discovered that they may have a hand in a galaxy's formation as well.
In the latest image inspired by observations of NASA's NuSTAR telescope and the ESA's XMM-Newton telescope, one can see cosmic winds howling out of supermassive black hole PDS 456. These winds are so strong that they prevent the galaxy from forming new stars.
The winds themselves are the consequence of a furiously spinning disk of matter that surrounds black holes.
According to the reports, NASA said supermassive black holes blast matter into their host galaxies, with X-ray-emitting winds traveling at up to one-third the speed of light.
In the new study, astronomers determined PDS 456, an extremely bright black hole known as a quasar more than 2 billion light-years away, sustains winds that carry more energy every second than is emitted by more than a trillion suns.
"Now we know quasar winds significantly contribute to mass loss in a galaxy, driving out its supply of gas, which is fuel for star formation," said the study's lead author Emanuele Nardini of Keele University in England.
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