In the 1930s, physicist and engineer Carl Jansky discovered a continuous source of radio waves when he pointed his radio antenna at the center of our galaxy. After some analysis, scientists realized that these radio waves were being emitted to our planet by something much further away from the Sun, but oddly enough, their energy was comparable to the waves we receive from the Sun. After receiving this information, they began to suspect that something truly powerful was hiding at the center of the Milky Way.

Later, astronomers realized that the source of these mysterious radio waves was none other than a supermassive black hole with a mass one million times greater than that of the Sun. We now call this Spring A. This massive object, often abbreviated as Sgr A*, acts as a gravitational anchor for the entire Milky Way. Since these initial observations, astronomers have learned a great deal about Sgr A*; Because astronomers can actually observe it, the black hole gives us our best chance to answer the intriguing question: Is it possible for stars to form around black holes?

Sgr A* is surrounded by a group of molecular clouds, which are interstellar nebulae in which you can see the appearance of one or two stars. But astronomers believe that the proximity of these clouds to the black hole could disrupt possible star births developing inside, as extreme tidal and electromagnetic forces are thought to destabilize pockets of gas that normally accumulate to form stars.

“The combination of a low-density environment and strong tidal forces [надмасивної чорної діри] It makes it difficult for stars to form in the “standard” way, that is, by the collapse of dense clouds of gas. They disintegrate before they emerge. “It could crash,” astrophysicist Rosalba Perna of Stony Brook University in New York told Space.com.

But recent observations have pointed to the possibility that star formation may have occurred much closer to Sgr A* than we first realised.

Astronomers have observed stars around Sgr A* for some time, but attributed their existence to having migrated towards the black hole after possibly initially forming as distant clusters. But the problem with this explanation is that many of these newly discovered stars appear to be very young and formed very far away and then traveled through space to reach Sgr A*.

Young stars seen near Sgr A*

A team of astronomers led by Florian Peisker, a PhD student at the Institute of Astrophysics at the University of Cologne, has identified the young stellar object X3a.

“It turns out that there is a region suitable for star formation a few light years away from the black hole. This region, which is a ring of gas and dust, is cold enough and protected against destructive radiation,” Peisker said. It was announced in the statement.

Surrounding Sgr A* and other supermassive black holes is an accretion disk of gas and dust that falls onto the black hole due to the tremendous gravitational force. The special disk surrounding Sgr A* extends 5 to 30 light-years from the black hole’s event horizon.

The team believes that X3a may have formed in a gas shell in the outer ring of the accretion disk surrounding Sgr A*. These gas clouds can grow large enough to collapse in on themselves and form protostars. The researchers also suggest other possible explanations for the presence of stars in the immediate vicinity of Sgr A*.

“The presence of young stars around black holes has led astrophysicists to broaden their view of star formation, and various theories have been developed to explain this, such as disc formation by the collapse of a molecular cloud, formation of a distant star by inward migration, and clustering due to shock compression caused by a tidal disruption event.” Perna says.

Perna recently wrote a paper suggesting that tidal disruption events (TDEs) near black holes could create the right conditions for star formation. TDEs are events in which gravitational instabilities can be introduced into the accretion disk of a black hole; An example of this is a star falling towards a black hole. These TDEs can interact with the black hole’s accretion disk in such a way that high gas densities and twilight occur, allowing dense clusters to transform into young stars.

Perna explains that star formation around black holes is likely influenced by the stage of evolution of the black hole in question. When a black hole is “active,” it is surrounded by a vast accretion disk of gas and dust, perhaps in the early stages when the galaxy surrounding it is a chaotic place. This accretion disk can be fertile ground for star formation due to the accumulation of high-density material. But now that the Milky Way is much older, things have calmed down and star formation around Sgr A* has probably slowed down compared to what it was in the distant past.