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Galaxy Punches Through Neighbor to Spawn Giant Ring of Black Holes
A giant ring of black holes has been discovered 300 million light-years away, offering new clues about what happens when galaxies collide. [...] The observed ring of black holes or neutron stars is believed to be the result of a galaxy collision. The galaxies were likely drawn together by gravity, and the gravitational force from one galaxy created waves in the gas surrounding its neighbor, which, in this case, is AM 0644. The ripples would have then caused the gas to expand or clump together in denser areas, triggering the birth of new stars.
"The most massive of these fledgling stars will lead short lives — in cosmic terms — of millions of years," representatives from the Chandra X-ray Observatory said in a statement. "After that, their nuclear fuel is spent, and the stars explode as supernovas, leaving behind either black holes with masses typically between about five to twenty times that of the sun, or neutron stars with a mass approximately equal to that of the sun." The black holes or neutron stars have close cosmic companions from which they siphon gas. This gas falls inward and is heated by friction, creating the bright X-rays detected by Chandra, according to the statement.
Also at Bad Astronomy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 12 2018, @05:07PM
You see, black hole is a stellar mass compacted to a several orders of magnitude smaller radius then the original star.
Stars "ignite" through the similar process: gravitational attraction between center of star's mass and every single particle in its contents draws the particles closer to the center of the mass, and in the process, brings them closer together. Particles' total kinetic energy is increased through their loss of gravitational potential energy and they exchange their energy and momenta between themselves through collisions.
With ample supply of interstellar gas and other matter (dust) around black hole, the same happens when it is drawn to the same radius around the center of the mass of black hole as they are inside a star - matter gets energetic, hot, and perhaps even starts to undergo nuclear fusion, creating even more energy in the process. Light and even some particles, the light ones as well as heavy element nuclei ones may even escape away from black hole (unless they are past its event horizon). But, unlike inside a star, there is less back pressure from the matter beneath them towards the periphery ("the bottom has fallen off").