August 10, 2009 - First Black Holes Born Starving -- return to
Press Releases -- Date Issued: August 10, 2009 Relevant Web
URLs: Menlo Park, Calif.—The first black holes in the universe
had dramatic effects on their surroundings despite the fact that
they were small and grew very slowly, according to recent
supercomputer simulations carried out by astrophysicists Marcelo
Alvarez and Tom Abel of the Kavli Institute for Particle
Astrophysics and Cosmology, jointly located at the Department of
Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford
University, and John Wise, formerly of KIPAC and now of NASA
Goddard Space Flight Center. Several popular theories posit that
the first black holes gorged themselves on gas clouds and dust
in the early universe, growing into the supersized black holes
that lurk in the centers of galaxies today. However, the new
results, published today in The Astrophysical Journal Letters,
point to a much more complex role for the first black holes.
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