Supermassive Black Hole in RX J1532: the Destroyer of Worlds

Supermassive Black Hole in RX J1532: the Destroyer of Worlds
27 January 2014

From the NASA website:

Astronomers have used NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and a suite of other telescopes to reveal one of the most powerful black holes known. The black hole has created enormous structures in the hot gas surrounding it and prevented trillions of stars from forming. The black hole is in a galaxy cluster named RX J1532.9+3021 (RX J1532 for short), located about 3.9 billion light years from Earth.

The SMBH (supermassive black hole) is located in a bright and massive elliptical galaxy at the centre of the cluster. The SMBH is very huge, even for supermassive black holes standards. It is responsible for the shock heating of the intergalactic medium around the cluster, hampering new star formation.

It might seem counterintuitive but for stars to form the primordial birth cloud has to be cool enough for the gas to condense. Only then the collapsing process can begin and eventually trigger nuclear fusion.