Binary Supermassive Black Hole Stops Star Formation in NGC 6240

Fresh News state from the the UNIVERSE. Massive Black hole stops star formation of NGC 6240. It is amazing that we have come so far in the SPACE RESEARCH and we are able to take a sneak peak of what's going out 300,000 Light years away. So back to the to the topic,the source for this news is SCI-NEWS.

NGC 6240 is a pair of merging galaxies approximately 400 million light-years away in the constellation Ophiuchus. It spans 300,000 light-years and has an elongated shape with branching wisps, loops and tails. While most galaxies hold only one supermassive black hole at their center, NGC 6240 contains two — and they’re circling each other in the last steps before crashing together.

NGC 6240. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech

New research, published in the journal Nature, reveals how gases ejected by NGC 6240’s spiraling supermassive black holes, in combination with gases ejected by stars in the galaxy, may have begun to power down production of new stars.

It also shows how these ‘winds’ have helped to create the galaxy’s most tell-tale feature: a massive cloud of gas in the shape of a butterfly.

“We dissected the ‘butterfly.’ This is the first galaxy in which we can see both the wind from the two supermassive black holes and the outflow of low ionization gas from star formation at the same time,” said lead author Dr. Francisco Müller-Sánchez, from the Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Dr. Müller-Sánchez and co-authors zeroed in on NGC 6240, in part, because galaxies with two supermassive black holes at their centers are relatively rare.

Some astronomers also suspect that those twin hearts have given rise to the galaxy’s unusual appearance.

The major structures identified in the central region of NGC 6240. Image credit: Müller-Sánchez et al, doi: 10.1038/s41586-018-0033-2

Unlike the Milky Way Galaxy, which forms a relatively tidy disk, bubbles and jets of gas shoot off from NGC 6240, extending more than 30,000 light years into space and resembling a butterfly in flight.

“Galaxies with a single supermassive black hole never show such a phenomenal structure,” Dr. Müller-Sánchez said.

The scientists discovered that two different forces have given rise to the nebula.

The butterfly’s northwest corner, for example, is the product of stellar winds, or gases that stars emit through various processes. The northeast corner, on the other hand, is dominated by a single cone of gas that was ejected by the pair of black holes — the result of those black holes gobbling up large amounts of galactic dust and gas during their merger.

Those two winds combined evict about 100 solar masses in gases from the galaxy every year.

“That’s a very large number, comparable to the rate at which the galaxy is creating stars in the nuclear region,” Dr. Müller-Sánchez said.

“Such an outflow can have big implications for the galaxy itself. When two galaxies merge, they begin a feverish burst of new star formation. Black hole and stellar winds, however, can slow down that process by clearing away the gases that make up fresh stars — much like how a gust of wind can blow away the pile of leaves you just raked.”

“NGC 6240 is in a unique phase of its evolution. It is forming stars intensely now, so it needs the extra strong kick of two winds to slow down that star formation and evolve into a less active galaxy,” said co-author Dr. Julie Comerford, also from the Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

SOURCE:- SCI- NEWS.

BUT THE QUESTION STILL REMAINS:- WHERE ARE THE ALIENS??(LOL)

Author Description