University of California, Riverside | 2019 Oct 14
Astronomers at the University of California, Riverside, have discovered that powerful winds driven by supermassive black holes in the centers of dwarf galaxies have a significant impact on the evolution of these galaxies by suppressing star formation.
Dwarf galaxies are small galaxies that contain between 100 million to a few billion stars. In contrast, the Milky Way has 200-400 billion stars. Dwarf galaxies are the most abundant galaxy type in the universe and often orbit larger galaxies.
The team of three astronomers was surprised by the strength of the detected winds.
“We expected we would need observations with much higher resolution and sensitivity, and we had planned on obtaining these as a follow-up to our initial observations,” said Gabriela Canalizo ... “But we could see the signs strongly and clearly in the initial observations. The winds were stronger than we had anticipated.”
Canalizo explained that astronomers have suspected for the past couple of decades that supermassive black holes at the centers of large galaxies can have a profound influence on the way large galaxies grow and age.
“Our findings now indicate that their effect can be just as dramatic, if not more dramatic, in dwarf galaxies in the universe,” she said. ...
AGN-Driven Outflows in Dwarf Galaxies ~ Christina Manzano-King, Gabriela Canalizo, Laura V. Sales
- Astrophysical Journal 884(1):54 (2019 Oct 10) DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ab4197
- arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1905.09287 > 22 May 2019 (v1), 01 Sep 2019 (v2)
