How Growing Black Holes Regulate Galaxy Formation

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<b>How Growing Black Holes Regulate Galaxy Formation</b><br /><br />LINK<br /><br />Using a new computer model of galaxy formation, researchers have shown that growing black holes release a blast of energy that fundamentally regulates galaxy evolution and black hole growth itself. The model explains for the first time observed phenomena and promises to deliver deeper insights into our understanding of galaxy formation and the role of black holes throughout cosmic history, according to its creators. Published in the Feb. 10 issue of Nature, the results were generated by Carnegie Mellon University astrophysicist Tiziana Di Matteo and her colleagues while at the Max Planck Institut fur Astrophysik in Germany. Di Matteo’s collaborators include Volker Springel at Max-Planck Institut for Astrophysics and Lars Hernquist at Harvard University.<br /><br />"In recent years, scientists have begun to appreciate that the total mass of stars in today’s galaxies corresponds directly to the size of a galaxy’s black hole, but until now, no one could account for this observed relationship," said Di Matteo, assistant professor of physics at Carnegie Mellon. "Using our simulations has given us a completely new way to explore this problem."<br /><br />The key to the researchers’ breakthrough was incorporating calculations for black hole dynamics into a computational model of galaxy formation.<br /><br />As galaxies formed in the early universe, they likely contained small black holes at their centers. In the standard scenario of galaxy formation, galaxies grow by coming together with one another by the pull of gravity. In the process, the black holes at their center merge together and quickly grow to reach their observed masses of a billion times that of the Sun; hence, they are called supermassive black holes. Also at the time of merger, the majority of stars fo