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The article starts with explaining that it’s daunting and hopeless sometimes to
understand how complex family dynamics works and says this holds good even for
“families” comprising of central black holes and their parent galaxies. Throughout
the 90’s astronomers started to study the enigmatic connection that exists between
super massive black holes and galaxies. They realized that a super massive black
hole, which possesses about million to billion solar masses, was not only seen in
few galaxies. Instead every large galaxy studied had a black hole lurking near its
center and they believed that there is a fundamental link between these two
entities.

The article describes that in 1993, John Normandy an astronomer at the university
of Texas found a relation between the mass of central black hole and that of its
host galaxy(precisely elliptical galaxies) and his observations fixed the mass ration
between 0.1 to 0.2 percent and another astronomer narrowed it down to 0.14
percent. They also found that the mass ratio is almost same over a range of
galaxies of different masses and different evolutionary stages, and predicted that
there is a mechanism which regulates the growth of black holes and galaxies and
the way they communicate. By 2000, astronomers were able to find a relation
between black hole mass and “velocity dispersion” – the random velocity of stars
orbiting around the bulge; this is a striking relation because stars around bulge lie
far away from the gravitational influence of the black hole. This introduces us to a
new concept called Co evolution which can be different as evolution of black holes
and galaxies as some sort of process where they both communicate through
feedback. Astronomers have come up with many theories to explain this and
research is still on.

The article further describes that even though it’s been a decade and we might
think we know a lot about black hole interactions, astronomers say otherwise. They
explain that they know only the end products and are still figuring out how the
correlations developed and when they developed. Another astronomer says that the
problem is not that we don’t have a theory, but rather we have too many theories
and gives an analogy of a patient getting confused when he visits five doctors and
each giving him a different diagnosis. An astrophysisct from Stanford explains that
most of what we know is from observations than theory and that they are still far
behind to make firm predictions about how black holes and galaxies interact and
evolve because of the limitations of our understanding in the nature of galaxy and
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billions of years of time period. In the same time observers are working to develop
better models to explain the uncertainties.

The article further describes about a 2009 paper from Yale university astronomer
Kevin Schawinski and his colleagues casting doubt on what was the reason behind
the leading mechanism to account for black hole –galaxy co evolution. A black
hole gravitationally pulls object towards its center and it will start accreting things
and this large accretions would lead into formations of an Active Galactic Nuclei
(AGN) and this would be emitting high energy X-rays and in their paper they
described that AGN would cut the black holes growth rate and at the same time it
would heat up gas so that it can no longer condense into stars and that AGN would
control the growth rate of the black hole and eventually regular the growth of the
galaxy itself. The research used data from Swift and ROSAT –X ray satellites and
identified 16 nearby galaxies and their accompanying black holes and were trying
to find what was the nature of galaxies when AGN’s were most active.

The article further describes that young star forming galaxies are blue and this
happens due to the short lived massive stars which dominate them and they burn in
blue light and these stars die off shortly and are replaced by smaller and cooler
ones which give off more red light. The Yale paper also describes something as the
“green valley”- galaxies which are populated mainly with starts of intermediate
colors and the article discusses about a new technique pioneered to use stars as
cosmic clocks to age-date sequence of events and astronomers compare it with
archeology. This approach shows that AGN’s reach their most active state in green
galaxies when it’s about 100 million years after star formation after the blue
period. Another astronomer says that if Schawinski’s work is right the whole
theory of co evolution may be more complicated than before. Another paper from
china’s observatory described star formation and black hole accretion happen as a
completely different times and different events trigger them and tells us that the
definition of co evolution must be broad. But all these studies fail to develop a
mechanism which can explain the above. The black hole galaxy mass relation has
been always been time tested and improved. Astronomers have accepted error bars
are large and explain that they have found the black holes in the early universe are
much more heavier relative to their host galaxies than of today a ratio of 1/30 to
that of 1/700(current ratio).
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The article further explains that the definition of black hole forming first and then a
galaxy is just an empirical statement and researchers are working on to collaborate
evidences and an astronomers explains that we must not imply that black holes
‘seed’ galaxies and explains that black hole grows at a faster rate due to its
accretion method and a black hole can convert up to 40% of its infilling matter into
stored energy. The data suggests that black home growth peaks early and galaxies
continue to grow longer. There is no single theory to account for the above.

To make the confusions even more a research paper in 2009 from Max Planck
institute of extraterrestrial physics explains the mass of black holes in M87 and
m60, two black holes of the Virgo cluster have been underestimated by a factor of
two and suggest that similar revisions may be necessary for most and explains the
incorporation of dark matter into the previous models to obtain the new result. The
velocity of star moving in galaxy depends on the systems total mass and explains if
the dark matter theory is incorporated to the present models it would decrease the
stellar masses and would have a increase in the black hole to galaxy mass ration
and as well as black hole’s mass.

The article concludes with one scientist explaining that the current state of
affairs(scientific knowings) as a interesting mess and that they are learning a lot of
new things and some of these might lead them to answer. Some astrophysicists
explain that co evolution is subtle yet very complex and they are working to find
connections between things(blackholes and galaxies). Some scientists believe that
their knowledge about this field will enhance when the aLMA and Very large array
telescroepes are operational as they will allow them to study black holes in depth
and a astronomers explains that sensitivity, spatial resolution and other factors will
raise by a level of factor of two if these telescopes become operational.The article
further describes about another paper from Max Planck institute in 2009 describing
HE 0450-2958 qusar which is acitviley building up its own host galalxy ,spurring
star formation by injecting matter and energy into the nearby cloud and this
explains that a blackhole comes first before the galaxy and yet to be confirmed.

The article ends with a Danish scientists words that “black holes hit back with a
vengeance”, explaining the mysterious nature of it.
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REFERENCE:

Astronomy magazine

Edition: May -2010

Article name:Exploring the Galaxy-black hole connection