Black holes seem to control galaxy development

[Jay-qu]

It's tough to feel warm and fuzzy about an infinitely dense object that holds light hostage, a dead star that would rip your feet from your head if you came within a few thousand miles of it.

 

But it turns out that the bete noires of our universe aren't so beastly. New research suggests they are triggers for galaxy development - nurturing nannies for star systems.

 

"They're not just Shiva the Destroyer; they're Brahma the Creator," said Scott Hughes, a black hole expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

 

And they aren't so black, either. Matter that doesn't fall in gets shot off at near-light speeds in bright, superheated plasma jets. On top of that, Albert Einstein's theories say black holes should be creating gravitational waves, tiny ripples in space that astronomers are trying to detect, in what could become a new way of doing astronomy.

 

http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/news/nation/14489240.htm