The thought of a distant region of space, more than 13 billion light-years away, is a bright one. “quasar“powered by a supermassive black hole 1.6 billion times more massive than the sun. Astronomers have recently observed the galactic beast, marking the oldest of its kind.
Old quasar, defined as a bright, massive, distant galactic nucleus that emits huge amounts of energy, was nicknamed J0313-1806 by an international team, led by researchers at the University of Arizona. It dates back to a staggering 670 million years after the Big Bang – when the children’s universe was only 5% of its current age.
This makes it the most distant – that is, the oldest – known quasar. The previous quasar record holder was also recently discovered in 2017.
J0313-1806 is only 20 million light years away from its predecessor, but it is supermassive black hole it is twice as difficult – known provocative theories about the formation of black holes in the early universe.
The team presented its findings, which will be published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, at the 237th virtual meeting of the American Astronomical Society this week.
“This is the oldest evidence of how a supermassive black hole affects its host galaxy around it,” lead author Feige Wang said in a statement. “From observations of less distant galaxies, we know this has to happen, but we’ve never seen it happen so early in the universe.”
NOIRLab / NSF / AURA / J. da Silva
Scientists believe that supermassive black holes swallow a huge amount of matter, such as gas or stars, to form an accumulation disk that revolves around it – creating a quasar. These objects are the brightest in the cosmos due to this huge amount of energy.
The celestial object is also the first of its kind to provide evidence of a hot gaseous wind pouring from its black hole at one-fifth the speed of light – a surprising discovery.
However, the formation of the quasar remains a bit of an enigma.
Black holes usually form when a star explodes, dies and collapses, and supermassive black holes grow as black holes merge over time. However, quasars in the early universe are far too young to become so huge, so fast, this way.
The supermassive black hole in the center J0313-1806 is so large – still growing because it ingests the mass equivalent of about 25 suns each year – it cannot be explained by a number of previous hypotheses.
“This tells you that no matter what you do, the seed of this black hole must have formed a different mechanism,” said co-author Xiaohui Fan. “In this case, one involving large amounts of primarily cold gaseous hydrogen, collapsing directly into a black seed hole.”
In this scenario, rather than a star collapsing into a black hole, huge amounts of cold hydrogen gas are responsible instead.
When quasars throw their surroundings, they remove much of the cold gas needed to form stars. Because of this, scientists believe that supermassive black holes in the center of galaxies could be the reason why galaxies stop forming new stars.
“We think those supermassive black holes were the reason many of the big galaxies stopped forming stars at some point,” Fan said. “We notice this ‘extinction’ at smaller red changes, but until now, I did not know how early this process began in the history of the universe. This quasar is the earliest evidence that the extinction could have happened at a very early time. “
J0313-1806 pumps 200 solar masses per year. For comparison, the Milky way it forms stars in the “quiet rhythm” of about one solar mass each year.
“This is a relatively high rate of star formation, similar to that observed in other quasars of similar ages, and tells us that the host galaxy is growing very fast,” Wang said.
“These quasars are probably still building their supermassive black holes,” Fan added. “Over time, the quasar’s exit heats up and pushes all the gas out of the galaxy, and then the black hole has nothing to eat and will stop growing. This is proof of how these first massive galaxies and their quasars grow.” . “
The quasar provides a brief look at the formation of the galaxy at the beginning of the universe, but researchers need a more powerful telescope to study it further. GODMOTHER James Webb Space Telescope, to be launched this year, will allow for a more detailed investigation.
“With ground-based telescopes, we can only see a point source,” Wang said. “Future observations could make it possible to solve the quasar in more detail, show the structure of its runoff and how far the wind extends into its galaxy, and that would give us a much better idea of its evolutionary stage.”