Supermassive black holes slow down the birth of new stars

Space is a real Pandora's box, holding a million mysteries that still baffle humanity. For more than twenty years, one of these mysteries has been how new stars form and why their births are so irregular.

Researchers at the University of Cambridge have shed some light on the matter. Using the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), they discovered that not all galaxies are actively forming stars — there are also stationary objects forming stars at a very low rate.

The researchers then used three cosmological simulations, EAGLE, Illustris, and IllustrisTNG, to determine which processes stop or inhibit star formation in galaxies. Through the classification of galaxies, AI also analyzed the influence of three factors: the mass of the dark matter halo around galaxies, the total mass of stars in a galaxy, and the mass of supermassive black holes. The latter, the black holes, turn out to influence star formation.

Supermassive black holes are objects with a mass equivalent to billions of suns. With this mass, they strongly influence their surroundings, literally manipulating the cosmos and the things around them so that the birth of new stars in their vicinity gets delayed.