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| Mitchell Begelman, an astrophysicist at the University of Colorado at Boulder and author of the review paper on black holes says that to understand the stars, galaxies, and the gas that lies between them, it is necessary to understand black holes. Research shows that black holes can only consume material that spins at a relatively slow speed, so as an object falls into a black hole it gives off all the excess energy to material that is farther out. Black holes are divided into two classes. The most common are remnants of massive stars that have collapsed. All stars that are considerably more massive than the sun will eventually meet this fate, said Begelman, meaning that galaxies such as the Milky Way have millions of these types of black holes. The other kind of black holes are known as super-massive black holes. Their formation process is less clear than that of stellar-mass black holes, but according to Begelman they seem to be at the center of every galaxy. Determining which came first, the galaxy or the black hole, is one of the major unsolved mysteries of black hole research, said Begelman. Driving the research quest to determine the answer is the curious fact that the masses of the super-massive black holes are correlated with the masses of galaxies. Again, further research may demonstrate why. Researchers are also testing Albert Einstein's 1915 theory of general relativity to find out if the principle developed to explain apparent conflicts between the laws of relativity and the laws gravity holds up at the most extreme of environments known—the region right next to black holes. For further details visit :- www.bbc.co.in |
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