Black holes are the most mysterious and notorious creatures of our universe. They are mighty and can literally digest anything that dares to come close to them. They eat stars and drink light. Even the time is not invincible before their power. Up until now, they have been known to be the destroyers of stars but it seems that these nasty creatures have an angelic side to them as well.
Astronomers from the European Space Organisation (ESO) have found evidence of stars being born from the dust surrounding the supermassive black holes (isn’t this crazy or what!).
The astronomers used a Very Large Telescope (VLT) located at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile to study an ongoing collision between two galaxies, which is happening nearly 600 million light-years from Earth (so there’s nothing to worry about!). They observed stars being born from the winds (called outflows) that originate at the heart of supermassive black holes.
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These stars are less than a few tens of millions of years old and are hotter and brighter than the stars formed in less hazardous environments (pun intended). And they are travelling at very large velocities away from the centre of their galaxy. However, what’s even more baffling is that eventually these stars slow down and head back into the black hole that they originated from (maintaining the cycle of life).
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The new study is in contradiction to the previous beliefs suggesting that nothing can escape a black hole.
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The new study also provides interesting information on our understanding of how galaxies get their shapes and how the space between the galaxies are filled with heavy elements.
