A Yale scientist’s theory about black holes has been confirmed by science — 20 years after she made her prediction.
Back in 1999, Priyamvada Natarajan was a graduate student at Cambridge University. She read a paper that suggested there might be a connection between supermassive black holes — like the one at the center of our galaxy — and the formation of distant stars.
“It was very counterintuitive how these two processes that occur on very different physical scales — how could they be coupled? So that’s when I had this counterintuitive idea.”
She theorized black holes could produce a sort of cosmic wind — a hot, fast-moving gas that could drift for thousands of light years and form stars on the edges of galaxies.
“That gas will fragment and form stars. So that naturally gives you a way to connect these two physical scales. This is cute, but the question is, is it observable?”
Natarajan says it wasn’t observable 20 years ago. But unbeknownst to her, a group of astronomers at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory took her theory seriously. They found her cosmic winds last year.
She says this discovery has some big implications about how galaxies form.
“This means we should start finding galaxies that don’t have our expected properties. And now we are starting to find those too. So that is what is super-exciting.”
And, of course, she says it’s nice to know her theory was right all along.
