Found the most voracious black hole in the Universe – DW – 11/04/2024

An international team of astronomers has discovered LID-568, a supermassive black hole that is feeding on matter at an extreme rate of 40 times the theoretical limit known as the Eddington limit. Researchers place it in the early Universe, just 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang.

“This black hole is having a feast,” says astronomer Julia Scharwechter of the Gemini Observatory and the National Science Foundation’s National Optical and Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory (NOIRLab).

“This extreme case demonstrates that a fast-food mechanism above the Eddington limit is one possible explanation for why we see these very heavy black holes so early in the Universe,” he says in statements compiled by Efe.

The Eddington limit is a natural consequence of the process of feeding black holes, indicate on the portal Science Alert

. “When a black hole actively accumulates a large amount of material, it does not fall directly into a gravitational well, but first swirls like water in a sewer, and only material from the inner edge of the disk crosses the horizon towards the black hole. .” .

Supermassive black holes are clumps of matter with gravity so strong that not even light can escape. They are usually found in the centers of galaxies, in the formation and evolution of which they play a key role.

James Webb Telescope, key element

The discovery described this Monday (11/4/2024) in the journal Nature Astronomymade possible by the exceptional infrared observing capabilities of the James Webb Telescope. Specifically, the researchers used the integrated field spectrograph of James Webb’s NIRSpec instrument, which allows them to gain a complete picture of the target and its surrounding region, leading to the unexpected discovery of powerful gas flows around the central black hole.

The speed and size of these flows led the team to conclude that much of LID-568’s mass growth may have occurred in a single episode of rapid creation.

“This discovery would not have been possible without this instrument from James Webb. Thanks to it, we can improve our understanding of black holes and open up interesting research directions,” says Hyewon Soo, a researcher at Gemini Observatory and NSF NOIRLab. .

The remoteness of LID-568 is surprising. Although the object is faintly visible from our point of view in the universe, they point to it from the portal. Science Alertits distance means it should be incredibly bright in its own right.

Understanding the Early Universe

The results provide new insight into the formation of supermassive black holes from the “seeds” of smaller black holes, which, according to current theories, arise from the death of the first stars in the Universe (light embryos) or from direct gas collapse. clouds (heavy seeds).

“The discovery of the Eddington superaccumulator black hole suggests that much of the mass growth may occur during a single fast-feeding episode, regardless of whether the black hole arose from a light or heavy seed,” says Su.

From the portal Science Alert indicate that this discovery may contribute to the understanding of the early Universe, since there is evidence that the first supermassive black holes formed not from the collapse of stars as we know them, but from huge stars and large gas clusters that collapsed directly under gravity.

“This would give them a head start on becoming the giant black holes we see in the Universe today,” they say.

aa (efe, Science Alert)