In a breakthrough discovery, scientists found the farthest kwasar still known – and it’s home to a serious supermassive black hole.
Astronomers led by researchers at the University of Arizona observed the brilliant quasar about 13.03 billion billion years from Earth. Quasars are one of the brightest objects in the universe; quasars are light, active galactic nuclei powered by supermassive black holes which actively feeds on nearby material.
When this material is sucked in, quasars emit ultra-bright rays of electromagnetic radiation. Scientists suspect that these glowing, ultramassive objects may be an evolutionary stage for some galaxies. In fact, scientists estimate that this particular quasar’s black hole consumes, on average, an amount of mass equal to 25 suns annually.
This quasar, named J0313-1806, can be dated back to just 670 million years later the big bang (the universe was currently only 5% of its current age), making it the most remote and earliest quasar ever found. This quasar also offers a supermassive black hole with a mass of 1.6 billion from our suns.
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A record quasar
Although this newfound quasar is astonishingly old and distant, the team’s observations also proved a wind of superheated gas flowing from around the supermassive black hole of the galaxy, and this gas moves at a fifth of the speed of light, according to a statement. If this strong quasar-powered wind from the most remote quasar never seen was not interesting enough, the team also found extremely active star-forming activity in the galaxy that holds the quasar.
It is estimated that J0313-1806 will create approximately 200 solar masses each year, compared to our Milky Way’s one solar mass per year, according to the statement.
“It has a relatively high rate of star formation, similar to that observed in other quasars of the same age, and it tells us that the host system is growing very fast,” said lead author Feige Wang, a Hubble Fellow at the University of Steward Observatory. Arizona, said in the same statement.
Quasar examination
Because of their close relationship, scientists think that by studying quasars, they can learn more about how objects formed and how supermassive black holes really behave.
While this quasar is only 20 million light-years away from Earth than the one that last held the title of “farthest quasar”, the supermassive black hole of the new record holder is about twice as heavy as that of its predecessor. This detail may change how scientists understand the connection between these supermassive, super-bright cosmic objects.
“This is the earliest evidence of how a supermassive black hole affects its host system around it,” Wang said. “From observations of less stellar galaxies, we know it has to happen, but we’ve never seen it happen so early in the universe.”
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How to make a supermassive black hole
Quasars like J0313-1806 that had accumulated such tremendous massive black holes in such a short time in the early universe have amazed scientists for years. While black holes can be created when stars erupt supernova and collapse and smaller black holes can merge, eventually building mass, these ultramassive quasars remain mysterious in the early universe. How did they become so massive so quickly?
With this ‘new’ quasar to study, this team is narrowing down how such a supermassive black hole could gain such mass and form in such a short time. The black hole of the quasar is too massive to be explained by some former theories. In fact, the team thinks that even if the black hole had formed 100 million years after the big bang and grown as fast as possible, it would still be only 10,000 times as massive as our sun – and that’s 1.6 billion times as large. massive.
“It tells you that no matter what you do, the seed of this black hole must have been formed by a different mechanism,” said co-author Xiaohui Fan, a professor and co-head of the Department of Astronomy at the University of Arizona. “In this case, one involving large amounts of original, cold hydrogen gas that collapses directly into a black black hole …” To grow the black hole to the size we see with J0313-1806, it would have to start out with a seed black hole of at least 10,000 solar masses, and this would only be possible in the direct collapse scenario. ‘
The team hopes to find more “born” quasars in the early universe to help them explore further and better understand how such massive, powerful objects originated.
“Our quasar survey covers a very wide field, enabling us to scan nearly half of the sky,” co-author Jinyi Yang, a fellow Peter A. Strittmatter at the Steward Observatory, said in the same statement. . “We have selected more candidates on whom we will follow up on more detailed observations.”
Yang added that future observations with a space telescope such as NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope could drive such research even further.
“With telescopes on the ground, we can only see a point source,” Wang said. “Future observations may make it possible to solve the quasar in more detail, to show the structure of its outflow and how far the wind extends into its galaxy, and this will give us a much better idea of its evolutionary stage. “
This work was accepted for publication in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters and was published on 12 January 2021 in the 237th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society.
Email Chelsea Gohd at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter @chelsea_gohd. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.