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Universe's Spiral Galaxy Population Evolving

Irene Klotz, Discovery News

In addition to forming bars, astronomers suspect the pooling together of matter in the galaxies' cores fuels development of black holes, which are feeding off the clustered material.

"Without this fueling, the black holes would be starved and the central regions of galaxies devoid of young stars," said CalTech astronomer Nicholas Scoville.

The work is a key finding for the Cosmic Evolution Survey, or COSMOS, a 130-member science team that began with Hubble Space Telescope observations and has since added data from dozens of space and ground- based telescope.

"We figured out in detail the history of the rate at which spiral galaxies formed over time," Sheth said. "It settles 15 years of debate in this field."

Results were announced by CalTech this week and published in The Astrophysical Journal in March.

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