Black holes happen to be one of the mysterious objects in space, but with repeated breakthroughs in science and research, we continue to discover some fascinating facts. In a recently published study, British and Dutch astronomers have observed that not all black holes consume their objects of desire in an equal manner, yes they all have their preferences and diets.
The two studies published in the international journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, studied all the active galaxies in the well-studied GOODS-North region in the constellation of Ursa Major. Before these studies were published, that region had been studied mainly by space telescopes collecting visible light, infrared light and UV light. With this new study, the latest observations add data from sensitive networks of radio telescopes, including the United Kingdom's e-MERLIN national facility and the European VLBI Network (EVN).
The most striking finding of this study was that the nuclei of many different types of galaxies can be active in different ways. Not all black holes consume the object in the same way, as the study shows that some are extremely greedy and gobble up as much material as they can; while others digest their food gradually taking their time, and there are others who nearly starve.
Occasionally, the process of accumulation of particles into a massive object by gravitationally attracting more matter, also known as accretion, also occurs in phases simultaneously with a star-formation phase and sometimes not. If a process of star formation is undergoing then activity in the nucleus becomes quite difficult to detect.
Another finding of the study mentions that the nuclear accretion process may or may not generate radio jets, regardless of the speed at which the black hole swallows its food.
Speaking on the recent findings, co-author Peter Barthel (University of Groningen, the Netherlands) told Netherlands Research School for Astronomy that they are getting more and more indications that all galaxies have gigantic black holes in their centers. He further mentioned that it seems, according to their observations, that they now have these growth processes in view and are slowly but certainly starting to understand them.
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