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This just in from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory:
NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has detected plump black holes where least expected -- skinny galaxies.
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Scientists have long held that all galaxies except the slender, bulgeless spirals harbor supermassive black holes at their cores. Furthermore, bulges were thought to be required for black holes to grow.The new Spitzer observations throw this theory into question. The infrared telescope surveyed 32 flat and bulgeless galaxies and detected monstrous black holes lurking in the bellies of seven of them. The results imply that galaxy bulges are not necessary for black hole growth; instead ... dark matter could play a role.
"This finding challenges the current paradigm. The fact that galaxies without bulges have black holes means that the bulges cannot be the determining factor, " said Shobita Satyapal of the George Mason University, Fairfax, Va. "It's possible that the dark matter that fills the halos around galaxies plays an important role in the early development of supermassive black holes."
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Read the whole story here. http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/Media/releases/ssc2008-01/release.shtml
Physical Science
