The growth of stars and black holes has been studied by a University of Massachusetts-Amherst undergrad. The James Webb Space Telescope will be able to untangle how, exactly, galaxies work.
The growth of black holes and the formation of new stars are two processes that drive the evolution of the universe. One of the questions that the recently launched James Webb Space Telescope will be exploring is how these processes are related. Scientists will be able to better understand how they are linked with the work done by Stone.
Stone is the senior author of a new paper that was recently published in The Astrophysical Journal. Black hole growth and star formation are important parts of the process. It has been difficult to see how the two regulate each other.
It has been difficult to study the interaction between black holes and stars because they take place behind huge clouds of dust. Most of the visible light can be absorbed by dust, and this dust absorbs visible light.
When the dust absorbs visible light, it warms up and can be seen by the naked eye. Stone, who will begin her graduate studies in astronomy at the University of Arizona this fall, used the Spitzer Space Telescope to look at the mid-Infrared wavelength range. Stone and her co-authors were looking for the fingerprints of black holes and stars in their stories.
The difficulty with these fingerprints is that they are very faint and hard to distinguish from the noise of the spectrum. Pope says that the measurement of the tracers was adjusted to make them more distinct.
The team was able to see that black hole growth and star formation are happening at the same time in the same universe. Stone was able to figure out how the two phenomena are related.
Stone's work can be taken up by the JWST, with its unprecedented access to the mid-Infrared spectrum light, and used to zero in on the questions that remain. Stone and her co-authors quantified how black holes and stars are linked in the same galaxy, but why they're linked isn't known.
More information: Meredith Stone et al, Measuring Star Formation and Black Hole Accretion Rates in Tandem Using Mid-infrared Spectra of Local Infrared Luminous Galaxies, The Astrophysical Journal (2022). DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ac778b Journal information: Astrophysical Journal
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