* Astronomy

Black hole winds pull the plug on star formation

Combining infrared observations from ESA's Herschel space observatory with new data from the Japanese/US Suzaku X-ray satellite, the astronomers detected the winds close to the central black hole as well as their global effect in pushing galactic gas away in a galaxy known as IRAS F11119+3257.
The winds start small and fast, gusting at about 25% the speed of light near the black hole and blowing away about the equivalent of one solar mass of gas every year.
As they progress outwards, the winds slow but sweep up an additional few hundred solar masses of gas molecules per year and push it out of the galaxy.
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