The disc of material swirling around a supermassive black hole may give birth to many planetsNASA and M. Weiss/Chandra X-ray Center
The active centres of galaxies might be regions of extraordinary planet formation, where millions of worlds are born.
Most galaxies in the universe, such as our own Milky Way, host a supermassive black hole at their centre. Most of the time, these black holes are quiescent, as there is no matter falling into them. But occasionally they become active and consume huge amounts of dust and gas, perhaps from a merger with another galaxy, becoming an active galactic nucleus for millions of years.
Barry McKernan at the City University of New York and his colleagues modelled the disc of dust and gas around a typical active galactic nucleus. They found it would be a prime location for planet formation, with the dust easily clumping together into bigger and bigger objects. Eventually planets would begin to grow in huge numbers, and with strange properties.
“This is a really amazing new pathway to form very alien planets,” says McKernan. “If these things exist, they’re quite unlike planets that we know and love.”
