2023-11-11 05:00:11
Astronomers, using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray Observatory, have discovered the oldest and most distant X-ray emitting quasar in the known Universe. This quasar appears to be powered by the “seed” of an ancient supermassive black hole.
Illustration of a quasar powered by an active supermassive black hole (The term activity can designate a profession.).
Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Joseph Olmsted (STScI)
Quasars, the bright hearts of active galaxies, are powered by active supermassive black holes which cause the emission of intense radiation (Radiation is a transfer of energy in the form of waves or particles, which can be… .) thermal (Thermal is the science which deals with the production of energy, the use of…) by matter (Material is the substance which makes up any body having a tangible reality. Its…) falling. The primordial quasar, named UHZ1, was spotted thanks to the light of X-rays emitted while the Universe of everything that exists and the laws that govern it.) was only 450 million years old, traveling approximately 13.7 billion years to reach us. This discovery might reveal how supermassive black holes reached enormous masses.
Scientific theory suggests that supermassive black holes grew from seeds of black holes in the early Universe, gradually growing by absorbing matter and merging with other black holes. A variation of this theory proposes that the seeds were “light seeds”, black holes created when massive stars exhausted their fuel for their fusion nuclear fusion (Nuclear fusion (sometimes called thermonuclear) is, with fission, one of the…) and exploded into supernovas, collapsing under their own gravity. . However, this explanation does not give enough time for supermassive black holes to reach masses equivalent to millions, or even billions of suns, in the early epochs when these colossi are observed in the young Universe.
The idea that they started growing from “heavy seeds” might give supermassive black holes a head start in this process. Between 2006 and 2007, Priyamvada Natarajan developed a model suggesting that heavy black hole seeds might form in galaxies without star formation. These galaxies would be satellites (Satellite may refer to:) located near the galaxies at the beginning of the Universe which gave rise to the first stars. This model suggests that large disks of gas and dust in these satellite galaxies might collapse directly into heavy black hole seeds.
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