- Students & Postdocs - Education & Outreach - About JILA Diary
of a Binge Eater Fellow Mitch Begelman and his colleagues came
up with the idea of quasistars to explain the origin of the
supermassive black holes found at the center of most galaxies.
According to Begelman, quasistars formed when massive amounts of
gas were funneled into the center of protogalaxies. This
prodigious amount of gas collapsed directly into black holes
without forming stars. The resulting black holes grew rapidly by
sucking in matter from the great envelopes of gas still
surrounding them. This process released enough energy to puff up
quasistars, which then radiated light (like stars). The
quasistars evaporated after about a million years. However, in
that amount of time, the “seed” black holes inside of them could
only have acquired masses of about a hundred thousand Suns.
However, the black holes at the center of most galaxies today
have masses of millions to billions of Suns. Something must have
happened after the quasistars disa