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Naive thought incoming: If these old galaxies are so dense, could that help explain why their black hole is disproportionately large? With so many stars so clo

Naive thought incoming: If these old galaxies are so dense, could that help explain why their black hole is disproportionately large? With so many stars so close together, maybe they’re gravitationally interacting with each other far more, causing a lot more instability. So you have a bunch of stars knocking each other around and as a byproduct more of them get flung close enough to the center to get captured by the black hole?

hansvm 2y ago
(not an expert, just a math guy who occasionally tunes in to this sort of thing) The pop-sci treatment of what you're describing is the "force-feeding" theory. Black holes exert an outward pressure as they consume material, naturally limiting the rate they're able to grow. There were some recent results lending credence to the growing body of evidence that force-feeding was, at the very least, not a common phenomenon. One such tidbit was discussed here at HN recently [0]. Nobody really knows for sure yet though. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40761465 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40761465