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The astronomer of the Faculty of Physical and Mathematical Sciences of the University of Chile Andres Escala published this Thursday evidence on the origin of supermassive black holes, postulating that these regions are born from the violent collision of stars in the center of galaxies.
According to the scientist’s research, supermassive black holes, that is, those whose mass exceeds by billions of times that of the Sun, originate product of the collapse of a cluster of stars in the nucleus of galactic gravitational structures.
This is the first evidence that supports the hypothesis of the origin by collapse of star clusters, as opposed to the two remaining possibilities: the collapse of a gas cloud or the growth of a small hole.
Nuclear star clusters, Escala explained to Efe, child large agglomerations of stars that are located in the center of galaxies and have massive dimensions.
From a certain density in these areas, determined in the scientist’s publication, “the stars that compose them begin to collide violently with each other and the system collapses forming a black hole”, described the academic.
“The formation of these types of holes is perhaps the most open problem in object formation, we have an idea of how galaxies, stars and planets are formed, but it is the first time that a link has been made from theory to what is observed, “added Escala, who is also Ph.D. in Astrophysics from Yale University.
If the studies continue in this line, the gravitational waves that the collapse of a black hole should emit will be detected by an observatory that will be launched in approximately 2030, called LISA.
Escala hopes that the computational simulations his team works on will support part of their results, obtained after nearly two years of work. and accepted by the prestigious scientific journal The Astrophysical Journal.
Chile, which has the clearest skies to observe the Universe from the Atacama Desert, has been transformed in recent years into the world capital of astronomy.
It is expected that in the medium term the South American country, which to date has 40% of the world’s space observation means, will concentrate 70 percent of the astronomical optical capacity, adding other state-of-the-art telescopes to imposing observatories such as ALMA. generation.
