A team of astronomers used the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to discover the most distant and oldest black hole ever seen as it feasted on its host galaxy.
This discovery could be a major step forward in understanding how supermassive black holes achieved masses equivalent to millions of billions of times the mass of the Sun in the early universe.
The black hole is located in the ancient galaxy GN-z11, which is 13.4 billion light-years away and therefore appears to be only 400 million years after the Big Bang. The black hole itself is about 6 million times more massive than the Sun and appears to be feeding matter from the surrounding galaxy five times faster than the limit suggested by current theories.
Cambridge University Department of Physics and team leader Roberto Maiolino described the discovery as a “giant step forward” for black hole science in a statement.
Relating to: Scientists discover cosmic fossil created by exploding supermassive black hole
“It is too early to see such a massive black hole in the universe, so we must consider other ways they could form,” Maiolino said in his statement. “Very old galaxies were extremely gas-rich, so they were a buffet for black holes.”
Are supermassive black holes supereaters?
The size of the first supermassive black holes, which formed when the universe was less than 1 billion years old, is a problem for formation theories because reaching a mass millions or billions of times that of the Sun would require billions of years of continuous feeding.
“It’s like seeing a family walking down the street, they’ve got two six-foot-tall teenage kids, but they’ve also got a six-foot-tall baby with them,” said Maynooth University research fellow John Reagan, who was not involved in this research. said. Space.com regarding the previous discovery. “This is a bit of a problem; how did the toddler get so tall? Same goes for supermassive black holes in the universe. How did they get so big so quickly?”
Scientists currently have two main paths black holes could take to reach supermassive status in the early universe. They may start out as tiny black hole seeds, formed as a result of the collapse of massive stars at the end of their lives and millions or billions of years later, or they may skip this stage altogether.
This could possibly occur if huge clouds of cold gas and dust collapse to form a “heavy black hole seed” with a mass several million times that of the Sun. In this way, the process progresses rapidly over millions or billions of years of stellar evolution, getting a head start on the feeding and merging processes that help black hole seeds develop into supermassive black holes. The discovery of this new ancient black hole, with a mass several million times that of the Sun, supports the heavy seed theory.
But on the other hand, the rate at which the black hole in GN-z11 accretes matter may suggest that black holes could feed much faster than other black holes observed in the early universe. . This would be a step forward for small black hole seed theories.
A mathematical formula known as the Eddington limit shows how fast an object such as a star can accumulate mass without the radiation it emits (its brightness) removing that mass, thus cutting off its food supply.
While black holes do not emit light because they are confined to a light-trapping boundary called the event horizon, their massive gravitational pull causes the material orbiting them to violently churn and heat up, emitting radiation in the process. The faster a black hole feeds, the more intense the light from the region called the active galactic nucleus (AGN).
Therefore, the Eddington limit applies to this region and could similarly remove matter and interrupt the black hole’s feeding frenzy.
This newly discovered black hole is accumulating matter from its host galaxy at a rate five times the Eddington limit. Periods of so-called “super Eddington accumulation” may occur, but at limited intervals.
The team estimated that if this black hole’s voracious feeding period had continued for 100 million years, it would not have had to start life as a heavy black hole seed. It may have formed from a much lighter stellar-mass black hole seed some 250 million to 370 million years after the Big Bang and rapidly grew to the mass observed by JWST 13.4 million years ago.
Feeding a black hole could devastate its host galaxy
One thing the team is pretty sure about is the intense feeding of this black hole responsible for GN-z11 itself, which is about 100 times smaller than the Milky Way and extremely bright. But the voracious black hole is also likely to inhibit the growth of its host galaxy.
Ultrafast particle winds blasting from around the feeder black hole are likely blowing gas and dust away from the heart of the galaxy. Clouds of cold gas and dust collapse on the birth stars, meaning that the black hole stops star birth and “kills” the growth of this small galaxy in the process.
In addition to learning more about this black hole and its galaxy, the team behind this research believes that the power of JWST will help uncover more black holes in the early universe.
In particular, they aim to discover tiny black hole seeds in the early stages of the universe and end the debate on the early growth of supermassive black holes.
RELATED STORIES:
— First black hole imaged by humanity loses huge amounts of energy due to ‘lightsaber’ jets
— Gravitational waves emitted from black hole mergers could help test general relativity
— A ‘non-galactic’ intruder may be lurking among the stars orbiting the Milky Way’s black hole
“This is a new era: The huge leap in sensitivity, especially in the infrared, is like upgrading Galileo’s telescope to a modern telescope overnight,” Maiolino said. he concluded. “Before JWST came online, I was thinking that maybe the universe isn’t that interesting when you go beyond what we can see with the Hubble Space Telescope it’s showing us, and this is just the beginning.”
The team’s research was published in the journal Nature on Wednesday, January 17.