Star formation activity and SMBH activity

[sender33]

Hello everybody,

I'm new here and i have a question about the activity of our galaxy's Supermassive Black Hole. Did it influence the star-formation activity or was it vice versa? I would be grateful if someone could tell me anything about this or give me some information directions. Thank you.

[JulianO]

Well - its complicated

SMBH's go through phases. Early on they are generally active, leading to quasars. In this phase they often emit jets, which can remove a lot of the gas that allows star formation, so it can shut off star formation to a certain extent. Then they usually calm down as they run out of fuel, and sometimes the gas can fall back in promoting new star formation, or maybe reactivating the black hole. 

Once they are dormant, they don't have lot of influence on star formation, that can be promoted by super novae,  mergers and the infalling gas. So it's quite a combination.

[Qualia]

I cannot help but I do know that your own type of question is investigated by the Herschel Space Observatory. Maybe a hunt around will shine light on your enquiry. If you have any insights or knowledge on the matter, please let us know.

[SimonS]

Simple answer is that we don't know, it is similar to the question of did the egg come first or the chicken.

What we know is that to have a black hole you need to have star death because black holes are the very dense cores (radius of about 1/2km) of the biggest stars out there.

The question is did the stars that formed out black hole come from a long gone ancient galaxy that was near our own or did the first stars to exist in our galaxy (would have died within a few hundred thousand or millions of years) create the SMBH for us.

my personal belief is that the stars formed first and the early deaths of supermassive stars (types O1 and O2, which are rarely seen today) created many black holes which over time merged leaving it as it is today. it is one of those subject areas where there are many theories and models but as far as i am aware, no one knows for certain.

[FraserClarke]

What we know is that to have a black hole you need to have star death because black holes are the very dense cores (radius of about 1/2km) of the biggest stars out there.

That's not the case for super massive black holes. These have to have a different formation mechanism (probably more closely linked to the formation of galaxies themselves) as they have masses of millions-billions that of the Sun. They are also present very soon after the big bang (few hundred million years) as they are powering quasars by that point.

It's certainly a fairly complex interaction, which I don't think anyone has a completely satisfactory model for yet.