Saturday, May 14, 2011

Astrocast 213 (Supermassive Black Holes)

Counts as two hours of Observations.

Many scientists agree that almost all large galaxies have a supermassive black hole, but they only recently figured out how they were created.  They know that supermassive black holes probably couldn't form the same way that stars are formed because there would be too many circumstances required every time.

However, one thing they forgot to figure in was that, back near the beginning of the universe, many small galaxies collided with many other small galaxies, forcing a mass of dust the size of thousands of stars toward the massive center while also sending some stars out at extremely high angular velocities.  The absolute chaos at the center prevented star formation long enough for the mass to collapse into a supermassive black hole.  After that point, the black hole's massive gravity pulled in all the surrounding matter in order to make the surrounding galaxy's shape.

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