The Formation of a Super Massive Black Hole

Black Holes as massive as a billion Suns are thought to form as galaxies collide and merge. This computer simulation follows the interaction between two large disk galaxies. Blue represent gas and red the stellar distribution. Each galaxy starts with a Black Hole at its center. The two Black Holes accrete large amounts of gas as they sink at the center of the collision remnant. Every second represents 70 million years.

The simulation was realized by the N-Body Shop at the University of Washington.
Credits: Fabio Governato, Jillian Meyer, Tom Quinn and James Wadsley

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Black
• Holes
• cosmology
• galaxies
• collisions
• dark
• matter
• seattle
• computer

[supersoulllama]

Why the hell can no one type properly. Everyone spells things wrong and i dont mind if it is just slang, but even when people are trying to sound intelligent they still do it.

[supersoulllama]

Oh im really sorry, i posted this comment a long time ago and i can't even remeber watching this video. I am not so single minded about that anymore and understand that English is not a first language for many people.

[nagualdesign]

Interesting simulation, but it does look as if the majority of the material of both galaxies is consumed, whereas it is my understanding that a supermassive black hole constitutes <1% of a galaxy's mass. Am I missing something?

[platano214]

Every point in space which will eventually become a galaxy has a huge gravitional pull that'll in turn heat up the interstellar medium around it and create a huge star that'll collapse into a S.m.Black hole that will spin and further heat up the interstellar space around it thus creating the first stars and Perhaps most of those stars migrate outward and become Nebulae thus explaining why some stars are far from the Galactic center

[Denali567]

wow you guys commenting are all nerds (no offense i go to a nerd school) but you actually post long explinations

[hrbear]

There is people who are not native english. This is the explenation. Everyone tries for his best, but not all have the Cambridge Proficiency in english :)

[hrbear]

I'm also surprised, because the only theory I heard about the supermassive black holes is that they have been created by huge gas clouds which self collapsed. It's the fist time that I see this theory. The theory around is that galaxies have already their supermassive black holes at their center, and during the collision a new bigger supermassive black hole will be created.

[personzorz]

I think it's more that galaxies form supermassive black holes on the order of millions of solar masses on their own - but when two galaxies merge their black holes and huge amounts of stars and gas proceed to form a black hole in the billions of solar mass range.

[ChronicallyConfused]

So is this a theory in progress? I've never heard this before. Supermassive black holes are caused by merging galaxies? this would mean that our galaxy has already collided with another to form what it is today. Nearly all galaxies (if not all) out there have supermassive black holes in the center if I remember correctly. This would be a huge statement if it actually turns out to be correct.