They confirm that black holes change the chemistry of galaxies
The study, carried out by the Center for Astrobiology (CAB) with the participation of the Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics of the Academia Sinica (Taiwan) and the Gran Telescopio Canarias (Grantecan), shows in particular how the activity of the hidden supermassive black hole at the center of the quasar has changed the chemical composition of the gas in the galaxy.
Quasars are one of the brightest types of objects that can be observed in the Universe, reports the Andalusian Institute of Astrophysics.
Like other active galaxies, at their center lies a supermassive black hole ranging in mass from millions to billions of times the mass of the Sun, surrounded by a disk of gas that feeds it.
The black hole’s intense gravity creates extreme temperatures and pressures in the accretion disk, causing the release of intense radiation and extreme phenomena such as jets of relativistic particles traveling at close to the speed of light or cosmic winds. , streams of gas and particles ejected at speeds of thousands of kilometers per second from the interior regions.
These winds, the researchers explain, are capable of pumping large amounts of energy into the rest of the galaxy.
“Cup of tea” formed by superwinds
The team responsible for this study produced a two-dimensional map of the relative abundance of oxygen and nitrogen in the gas of the active galaxy SDSS 1430+1339, discovered by volunteers of the citizen science project Galaxy Zoo and discovered more than a billion light years from Earth.
This quasar, colloquially called “The Cup” due to its distinctive teacup-like shape, is characterized by a bubble of hot ionized gas more than 30,000 light-years in diameter surrounding its active core.
This bubble is due to the presence of a huge flow of energy and high-speed particles caused by the activity of its supermassive black hole.
The findings show that this stream, called a “superwind,” acts as a powerful mechanism for injecting energy throughout the galaxy, even influencing the chemical composition of the gas it contains.
According to Montserrat Villar, a CSIC researcher at the Astrobiology Center and lead author of the paper, the study shows that the action of this superwind influences the chemical composition of the gas as it passes through the galaxy, and that its effects reach vast distances.
The change in the relative abundance of oxygen and nitrogen observed in the Teacup Galaxy may be compatible with several scenarios. In all of them, nuclear activity associated with a supermassive black hole acts as the mechanism ultimately responsible for chemical enrichment of the gas even at great distances.
It is unknown whether the change in chemical abundance in the outer regions was caused by the displacement of heavy elements from the central region of the galaxy or by other mechanisms unrelated to this drag.
“Another possibility,” he elaborates, “is that this superwind caused the formation of stars in regions very far from the galactic core, and that they enriched the environment through supernova explosions.”
Either way, this quasar provides “clear observational evidence of how nuclear activity can enrich gas on a large scale, perhaps even beyond the galaxy itself,” Villar says.
Sara Cazzoli, a researcher at the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia and co-author of the study, argues that understanding how supermassive black holes regulate the evolution of galaxies is one of the hottest topics in modern astrophysics.
The team conducting the study used integrated field spectroscopy data obtained from the MUSE instrument of the Very Large Telescope (VLT), a set of four 8.2-meter-diameter telescopes located at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) facilities in Chile’s Atacama Desert. .