Researchers say they are responsible for the supermassive black holes in the center of galaxies.
Supermassive black holes
Researchers have found evidence to suggest that the supermassive black holes in the center of galaxies used to be really big stars.
Like really very big.
Scientists at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan and the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics (ASIAA) in Taiwan suspect that large supernovae of supermassive stars may have created these black holes, according to Phys.org. The team published a summary of their findings in the journal Monthly notices from the Royal Astronomical Society.
These ancient stars would have had a mass in the order of millions to billions times the size of the sun. So yeah, they were pretty damn big.
Extreme Supernova
It’s hard to examine black holes. As such, information about its origin remains elusive to scientists.
However, according to their study, the research team behind this article was able to perform a “radiation hydrodynamics simulation” to gather their evidence.
As part of their study, the team predicts that the James Webb Space Telescope will be able to observe an extreme supernova when it launches later this year. If this happens, it will add very strong evidence that these supermassive stars are the origin of supermassive black holes.
Black hole seeds
This study builds on previous research conducted by Ke-Jung Chen, Assistant Research Fellow at ASIAA Taiwan and co-author of the paper. He says that these supermassive stars will probably act as a “black hole seed”.
“There are perhaps a small number of the first stars in the early universe with tens of thousands of solar masses,” Chen said in a press release. ‘They are probably the ancestors of supermassive black holes in the galaxies. Because the more massive the black hole seed, the more effective it is to swallow the surrounding material. ”
Ah, wicked massive black holes that can engulf everything we know and love. What a comforting thought! Fortunately, we never have to encounter one, not even when our sun reaches the end of its life and shrinks into a white dwarf.
Between this and the swarm black holes scientists discovered earlier this year, but that’s just another thing to keep us up at night.
Editor’s Comment 3/15/2021: This story was originally wrong what we would expect at the end of our Son’s life. It has been updated.
READ MORE: Massive stars in the early universe may have been ancestors of super-massive black holes [Phys.org]
More about black holes: Black holes can devour stars from within, such as cancer
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