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Galactic Warming Caused by Supermassive Black Holes
STATES CHRONICLE – It’s possible that astronomers might have discovered galactic warming, a natural event similar to Earth’s warming phenomenon, the global warming.
In the Sloan Digital Sky Surveys study conducted by Dr. Edmund Cheung of the University of Tokyo in Japan, astronomers “found” the galactic warming possibility after studying what they called the “red geysers,” a new type of galaxies. The name comes from the galaxy’s lack of young, bright blue stars.
The first red geyser was found using the Mapping Nearby Galaxies at APO (MaNGA), a survey method that allows researchers to observe galaxies in 3D by mapping them and their stars and gas movements. The MaNGA survey has charted approximately 10,000 galaxies, their supermassive black holes, and edges.
Through this method, the international team of astronomers appears to have solved the longstanding mystery of what turns galaxies into regions where no more star genesis occurs. The cause of this astronomical “infertility,” or in technical terms “quenching,” could be the phenomenon of galactic warming.
The supermassive black holes create interstellar winds of such incredible heats even stars cannot form anymore. So galaxies containing these supermassive red geysers make entire star systems dormant. Scientists have mapped numerous red geysers galaxies.
Although this phenomenon is currently being studied, if other scientists confirm it, the galactic warming could explain the major unanswered question of what separates the active galaxies from the sleeping ones.
Astronomers say they couldn’t understand what prevented the condensation of gas needed to form stars from unfolding. Dr. Cheung said it was like seeing deserts in regions with dense clouds. Given the fact that the sleepy galaxies had enough gas to produce stars, the researchers knew something else was going on, but no one knew what until now.
The old galaxies or old geysers are probably pulled in by active galaxies through the force of the supermassive black holes. GAalactic warming was predicted as a possibility, but it was never witnessed before.
The first geyser found through the MaNGA studies was affectionately called Akira, by Doctor Cheung, after a Japanese manga character. The MaNGA snapshots can reveal “even the quickest changes to galaxies,” says Renbin Yan one of the research team member from the University of Kentucky, and this is what led to the discovery of Akira.
The researchers are now looking for confirmation that galactic warming is indeed the event that leads to the galaxy system “infertility.”
Image source: Wikimedia
