Until now, scientists have puzzled over how stars could form around a black hole, since molecular clouds - the normal birth places of stars - would be ripped apart by the black hole's immense gravitational pull.
However, the new study by Professor Ian Bonnell (St Andrews) and Dr Ken Rice (Edinburgh) found that stars appear to form from an elliptical-shaped disc, the remnant of a giant gas cloud torn apart as it encounters a black hole.
The discovery of hundreds of young stars, of high masses and making oval-shaped orbits around a black hole three million times more massive than the sun, and at the centre of our Galaxy, is described as one of the most exciting recent discoveries in astrophysics.
No comments:
Post a Comment