2024-02-01 13:03:00
02/01/2024 Artist’s impression of a quasar whose central region was literally set in motion in the early universe. POLICY RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGY ESO / M. KORNMESSER
Observations with the Very Large Telescope (VLT) of the European Southern Observatory have made it possible to determine the mass of a black hole in a galaxy just 2 billion years following the Big Bang. At 300 million solar masses, the black hole is actually low-mass compared to the mass of its host galaxy, reveals the research, carried out with the updated GRAVITY instrument on the VLT interferometer. “In 2018, we made the first groundbreaking measurements of the mass of a quasar black hole with GRAVITY,” says Taro Shimizu, a scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, who leads the study. “However, this quasar was very close. Now, we have reached a redshift of 2.3, which corresponds to a look back time of 11 billion years.” GRAVITY+ now opens up a new and precise way to study black hole growth at this critical time, often called “cosmic noon,” when both black holes and galaxies were growing rapidly. “This is really the next revolution in astronomy: we can now obtain images of black holes in the early universe 40 times sharper than those possible with the James Webb telescope,” says Frank Eisenhauer, director of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, who He leads the group developing the GRAVITY instrument and GRAVITY+ improvements. GRAVITY interferometrically combines the four 8-metre telescopes of ESO’s Very Large Telescope, essentially creating a giant virtual telescope with a diameter of 130 metres. The team was able to spatially resolve the motion of gas clouds around the galaxy’s central black hole, called SDSS J092034.17+065718.0, as they rotate in a thick disk. This allows a direct measurement of the black hole’s mass. At 320 million solar masses, the mass of the black hole is actually lower than that of its host galaxy, which has a mass of approximately 60 billion solar masses. This suggests that the host galaxy grew faster than the supermassive black hole, indicating a lag between the growth of the galaxy and the black hole in some systems. “The likely scenario for the evolution of this galaxy appears to be a strong supernova feedback, where these stellar explosions eject gas from the central regions before it can reach the black hole at the galactic center,” says Jinyi Shangguan, a scientist in the same group. research. “The black hole can only begin to grow rapidly – and catch up with overall galaxy growth – once the galaxy has become massive enough to retain a reservoir of gas in its central regions, even once morest the feedback of a supernova. “he added in a statement. To determine whether this scenario is also the dominant mode of coevolution of other galaxies and their central black holes, the team will follow up with more high-precision mass measurements of black holes in the early universe.
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