Black holes can not only rip stars apart, but they can also trigger star formation, as scientists have now seen in a nearby dwarf galaxy.

At the centers of most, if not all, large galaxies are supermassive black holes with masses that are millions to billions of times that of Earth's sun.

Video: Dwarf galaxy’s black hole triggers star formation.

Black hole-driven star formation was previously seen in large galaxies, but the evidence for such activity in dwarf galaxies was scarce.

Dwarf galaxies are roughly analogous to what newborn galaxies may have looked like soon after the dawn of the universe, so investigating how supermassive black holes in dwarf galaxies can spark the birth of stars may in turn offer "a glimpse of how young galaxies in the early universe formed a portion of their stars," study lead author Zachary Schutte, an astrophysicist at Montana State University in Bozeman, told Space.com.

In a new study, the scientists investigated the dwarf galaxy Henize 2-10, located about 34 million light-years from Earth in the southern constellation Pyxis.

A decade ago, study senior author Amy Reines at Montana State University discovered radio and X-ray emissions from Henize 2-10 that suggested the dwarf galaxy's core hosted a black hole about 3 million solar masses in size.

In the new study, the researchers focused on a tendril of gas from the heart of Henize 2-10 about 490 light-years long, in which electrically charged ionized gas is flowing as fast as 1.1 million mph (1.8 million kph).

Since a supernova remnant would not cause such a pattern, this suggests that Henize 2-10's core does indeed host a black hole!

"Before our work, supermassive black hole-enhanced star formation had only been seen in much larger galaxies," Schutte said.

In the future, the researchers would like to investigate more dwarf galaxies with similar black hole-triggered star formation.