The ‘chicken and egg’ question of whether a galaxy or its black hole comes first is one of the most debated subjects in astrophysics. A recent  study suggested that supermassive black holes can trigger the formation of stars, thus ‘building’ their own host galaxies. This could be the long-sought missing link to understanding why the masses of black holes are larger in galaxies that contain more stars. To reach such an extraordinary conclusion, the team of astronomers conducted extensive observations of a peculiar object, the nearby quasar HE0450-2958, which is the only one for which a host galaxy has not yet been detected. HE0450-2958 is located some 5 billion light-years away. Read the rest of this entry »