"Once you go to lower redshifts, all the models could explain the existence of those less distant and less massive quasars," he said. This is what makes the new record quasar so valuable, Fan explained. "In this case, one that involves vast quantities of primordial, cold hydrogen gas directly collapsing into a seed black hole."īecause this mechanism doesn't require full-fledged stars as raw material, it is the only one that would allow the supermassive black hole of quasar J0313-1806 to grow to 1.6 billion solar masses at such an early time in the universe. "This tells you that no matter what you do, the seed of this black hole must have formed by a different mechanism," said co-author Xiaohui Fan, Regents Professor and associate head of the UArizona Department of Astronomy. The team calculated that if the black hole at its center formed as early as 100 million years after the Big Bang and grew as fast as possible, it still would have had to have at least 10,000 solar masses to begin with. Quasar J0313-1806, however, boasts a black hole too massive to be explained by the aforementioned scenarios, according to the team that discovered it. However, much like it would require many lifetimes to build a retirement fund by chipping in a dollar each year, quasars in the early universe are a little bit like toddler millionaires they must have acquired their mass by other means.Īn international team of astronomers have discovered the most distant quasar in the Universe, fully formed around 670 million years after the Big Bang. When such black holes merge over time, they can-theoretically-grow into supermassive black holes. A commonly accepted explanation of black hole formation involves a star exploding up as a supernova at the end of its life and collapsing into a black hole. Quasars that already amassed millions, if not billions, of solar masses in their black holes at a time when the universe was very young pose a challenge to scientists trying to explain how they came into existence when they barely had the time to do so. "From observations of less distant galaxies, we know that this has to happen, but we have never seen it happening so early in the universe." "This is the earliest evidence of how a supermassive black hole is affecting its host galaxy around it," said the paper's lead author Feige Wang, a Hubble Fellow at UArizona's Steward Observatory. This marks a significant advancement for cosmology, as it provides the strongest constraint yet on the formation of black holes in the early universe. Because of the enormous energies involved, quasars are among the brightest sources in the cosmos, often outshining their host galaxies.Īlthough J0313-1806 is only 20 million light-years farther away than the previous record holder, the new quasar contains a supermassive black hole twice as heavy. Quasars are thought to result from supermassive black holes gobbling up surrounding matter, such as gas or even entire stars, resulting in a maelstrom of superheated matter known as an accretion disk that swirls around the black hole. The UArizona team also contributed to that discovery. The previous record-holder among quasars in the infant universe was discovered three years ago. The researchers will present their findings, which have been accepted for publication in Astrophysical Journal Letters, during a press conference and a scientific talk at the 237th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society, which will be held virtually Jan. In addition to revealing a strong quasar-driven wind, the new observations also show intense star formation activity in the host galaxy where the quasar, formally designated J0313-1806, is located. In addition to being the most distant-and by extension, earliest-quasar known, the object is the first of its kind to show evidence of an outflowing wind of super-heated gas escaping from the surroundings of the black hole at a fifth of the speed of light.
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