Ram pressure feeding super-massive black holes

Understand

When supermassive black holes at the center of galaxies accrete matter (usually gas), they give rise to highly energetic phenomena named Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN).

• A number of physical processes have been proposed to account for the funneling of gas towards the galaxy centers to feed the AGN.
• There are also several physical processes that can strip gas from a galaxy, and one of them is ram pressure stripping in galaxy clusters due to the hot and dense gas filling the space between galaxies.
• We report the discovery of a strong connection between severe ram pressure stripping and the presence of AGN activity.