The question of how star formation occurs in galaxies and why it is uneven still remains.
In the new work, astronomers used machinetraining to figure out why not all galaxies in the local universe actively form stars. There are stationary objects that do this at times lower.
Joanna Piotrowska, Ph.D. studentUniversity of Cambridge and her team used three modern cosmological simulations - EAGLE, Illustris and IllustrisTNG - to understand which physical processes are stopping star formation in massive galaxies.
Next, the authors trained AI to classify galaxies into star-forming and stationary, in order to understand which of the three parameters affects the formation of stars:
- mass of supermassive black holes,
- the total mass of stars in the galaxy,
- the mass of the dark matter halo around galaxies.
New models predict that the mass of a supermassive black hole is the most important factor inhibiting star formation.
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