Often the most exciting black hole news surrounds the biggest, baddest and most violent voids we can imagine. I’m talking about supermassive black holes with masses billions of times that of the Sun; Called quasars, they eat away at the matter around them and spew out the excess so aggressively that they create patterns of light that dwarf even the galaxies they inhabit. You know these.
But on Thursday, March 7, scientists published a study that serves as a reminder: It’s not just bad black holes that are worth thinking about. With the help of the reliable James Webb Space Telescope, this team identified a population of luminescent quasars that are characteristically not very large. Frankly, they’re pretty big, because they’re still supermassive black holes. HE big.
Relating to: James Webb Space Telescope finds ‘extreme red’ supermassive black hole growing in early universe
In short, the reason this finding is so important is that scientists have long been unsure how some of these quasars got to the giant sizes we observe. We know that inconceivably massive quasars exist, but exactly how these quasars achieve this inconceivably massive status remains unclear. Despite the large amount of matter they absorb, it seems like not nearly enough time has passed for them to reach their final state. So could these newly discovered smaller quasars represent a transitional phase of giant giants, filling a gap that scientists have long hoped to fill?
“One problem with quasars is that some appear extremely large, very large given the age of the universe in which quasars are observed,” said Jorryt Matthee, lead author of the study and an assistant professor at the Institute of Science. Technology Austria said: expression. “We call them ‘trouble quasars’.”
Supermassive mysteries
The lives of these “trouble quasars” begin with the death of massive stars.
As a truly massive star approaches the end of its life, the internal nuclear fusion processes that convert its hydrogen content into helium begin to slow down. Eventually, this type of internal fusion stops completely. This is a problem for a star who wants to fall into the clutches of death. When fusion ends, the external pressure that has kept the star stable against the inward push of its own gravity for millions, often billions, of years ends. Eventually the star collapses on itself. An explosive supernova dies its death and a black hole is born.
Then, if this black hole begins to actively feed on surrounding matter, it will eventually become a big, bad quasar. But therein lies the problem. What happens in between?
“Considering that quasars arise from explosions of massive stars, and that we know their maximum growth rates from general laws of physics, some appear to have grown faster than is possible,” Matthee explained. “It’s like looking at a five-year-old child from a distance of 2 metres.” [6.5 feet] LONG. Something doesn’t make sense.”
Aha! This is where the team’s new, medium-sized black hole discovery comes into play. Perhaps these small quasars represent the missing piece of the troubled quasar timeline.
“Black holes and [supermassive black holes] They are probably the most interesting things in the universe. It’s hard to explain why they’re there, but they are there. We hope that this work will help us unravel one of the greatest mysteries about the universe,” Matthee said.
Follow the red dots
In a rather cinematic way, the researchers say JWST identifies the objects, which the team endearingly calls “baby quasars,” as a few tiny red dots.
“‘Trouble quasars’ are blue in color, extremely bright, and have masses billions of times that of the Sun, while the small red dots look more like ‘baby quasars.’ They have masses between 10 and 100 million solar masses,” said Matthee. “They also appear red because they are dusty. The dust obscures the black holes and reddens the colors.”
It’s also important for the team to know that these observed black holes are indeed quasars, in other words, they are (or at least will be) actively feeding due to their reddish hue. The researchers explain that their targets emit what are known as “Ha spectral emission lines” with “broad-line profiles.” They say these spectral lines appear when hydrogen atoms are heated; The width of the lines can also track the movement of the gas. The wider the base of the line, the higher the gas velocity.
“So, these spectra tell us that we are looking at a very small cloud of gas that is moving extremely fast and orbiting something very large. [supermassive black hole]” said Matthew.
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The team’s natural next step is to investigate these baby quasars in more detail and try to truly connect them to their big sister quasars, which are causing a dilemma for scientists in their black hole ancestor calculations. Even better, the team is generally pretty excited about the datasets JWST captured from the region it studied. One of the collaborations behind the data, which EIGER calls “Emission Line Galaxies and Intergalactic Gas in the Age of Reionization,” wasn’t even designed to find the red dots it encountered. “We found them by accident,” Matthee said.
“If you lift your index finger and extend your arm fully, the region we discovered in the night sky corresponds to roughly one-twentieth of the surface of the fingernail. So far we’ve probably only scratched the surface.”
An article about the discovery was published in March. 7th in the Astrophysical Journal