Galaxies Can Grow Fat Black Term Paper

However, unlike other spiral galaxies found scattered throughout the universe, the black hole which is assumed to exist in the center of the Milky Way galaxy is dormant and is not "actively feeding," meaning that it is not currently swallowing up material for some unknown reason. Almost from the beginning of astronomical observations of galactic bodies in the universe, it has always been thought that "the more massive the bulge, the more massive the black hole" which has led scientists and astronomers to reason that "somehow the formation and growth of galaxy bulges and their central black holes are intimately connected." But in 2003 when the Spitzer Space Telescope began to be utilized to collect infrared data from a number of different types of galaxies, scientists discovered that thin or slender galaxies which lack prominent central bulges did indeed contain supermassive black holes. During a recent study with the Spitzer Space Telescope, Satyapal and her fellow researchers discovered "six more hefty black holes in thin galaxies with minimal bulges" which only weakened current theories on the "bulge-black hole" phenomena, and since the Spitzer telescope was designed to detect and record infrared light sources, "fingerprints of active black holes lurking in galaxies millions of light years away" were clearly detected.Thus, as Satyapal sums it up, dark matter "might somehow determine the mass of a black hole early on in the development of a galaxy" which opens the possibility that galactic bulges serve "as a proxy for the dark matter mass, the real determining factor behind the existence and mass of a black hole" in the center of even thin and slender galaxies in the universe.

Bibliography

Even Thin Galaxies Can Grow Fat Black Holes." Science Daily. Internet. January 16, 2008.….....