Oct 13 2005
From The Space Library
Scientists published research based on data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, which provided the first observational evidence that black holes not only destroy stars, but also create them. Sergei Nayakshin of the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom and Rashid A. Sunyaev of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching, Germany, compared x-ray emissions from stars in the Orion nebula with x-ray emissions from stars orbiting within one light-year of the central Milky Way's black hole Sagittarius A*. According to current scientific theories, a black hole's immense gravity is able to pull millions of stars close to the black hole and to destroy stars. However, Nayakshin and Sunyaev had discovered that Sagittarius A* is not consuming its surrounding stars. Furthermore, the number of stars near the black hole is around 10,000, far less than scientists would expect if the black hole's gravity had drawn the stars toward it. Therefore, the scientists had concluded that the Chandra data supports an alternative theory of why stars are near black holes. This theory holds that dust around a black hole creates dense gas clouds. The gravity of the clouds counteracts the gravity of the black hole, thereby creating an environment in which stars form. (NASA, “NASA's Chandra Reveals New Star Generation,” news release 05-344, 10 October 2005; Sergei Nayakshin and Rashid Sunyaev, “The 'Missing' Young Stellar Objects in the Central Parsec of the Galaxy: Evidence of Star Formation in a Massive Accretion Disc and a Top-Heavy Initial Mass Formation,” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters 364, no. 1 (13 October 2005): L23-L27.)
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