Another step forward in understanding galaxies

Researchers Polychronis Papaderos and Jean Michel Gomes, from the Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics (CAUP), recently published in the journal “Astronomy & Astrophysics” the results of a study that had the support of FCT at several levels.

The discovery described in this article has important consequences for understanding the active nucleus of galaxies, one of the most energetic phenomena in the Universe. The results indicate that the interstellar medium of some galaxies is so porous that up to about 90% of the radiation produced by the stars is not absorbed.

As Polychronis Papaderos explains, the results of this project “provide the solution to a 30-year-old enigma and a new conceptual model with which the family of active galactic nuclei becomes much simpler than we previously thought.”