Supermassive black holes put a brake on stellar births

Black holes with masses equivalent to millions of suns do put a brake on the birth of new stars, say astronomers. Using machine learning and three state of the art simulations to back up results from a large sky survey, the researchers resolve a 20-year long debate on the formation of stars. Joanna Piotrowska, a Ph.D. student at the University of Cambridge, will present the new work today at the virtual National Astronomy Meeting (NAM 2021).