Cenko S Bradley, Gehrels Neil
Sci Am. 2017 Mar 14;316(4):38-45. doi: 10.1038/scientificamerican0417-38.
At the heart of our milky way and of virtually every other large galaxy lurks a deep cosmic mystery—a supermassive black hole. Squeezing millions to billions of times more mass than our sun into regions smaller in size than our solar system, these objects are so bizarre as to seem almost mystical. No one yet understands exactly how nature has managed to compress so much matter into such small spaces. What is clear is that the hidden gravitational hands of supermassive black holes reach out to shape their surrounding galaxies in profound yet subtle ways. By studying the growth and behavior of these ghostly black holes, scientists hope to unlock the secrets of how galaxies themselves are born and evolve.
在我们银河系以及几乎每一个其他大型星系的中心，都潜藏着一个深刻的宇宙之谜——一个超大质量黑洞。这些天体将数百万倍至数十亿倍于太阳的质量压缩到比我们太阳系还小的区域，它们是如此奇异，几乎显得神秘莫测。目前还没有人确切知道大自然是如何将如此多的物质压缩到如此小的空间里的。清楚的是，超大质量黑洞隐藏的引力之手以深刻而微妙的方式伸展出来塑造其周围的星系。通过研究这些幽灵般黑洞的生长和行为，科学家们希望揭开星系本身如何诞生和演化的秘密。
