???? Unprecedented discovery of a “seed” of a massive black hole

2023-08-24 04:00:14

The riddle of supermassive black holes that appeared less than a billion years following the Big Bang may finally be solved thanks to the discovery of the first evidence of massive black hole “seeds”.

Astronomers believe they have identified these “seeds” of black holes, essential for understanding the rapid evolution of certain black holes having a mass equivalent to millions, or even billions, of times that of the Sun (The Sun (Sol in Latin, Helios or Ήλιος in Greek) is the star…). These seeds of black holes might have masses close to 40 million times that of our Sun. They would form directly from the collapse of a huge cloud of gas, unlike typical black holes from the collapse of massive stars at the end of their lives.

Image d’illustration Pixabay

The galaxies thought to harbor these seeds are called Outsize Black Hole Galaxies (OBGs). These galaxies are very distant, having appeared when our Universe, currently 13.8 billion years old, was only 400 million years old.

The team led by Akos Bogdán of the Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian detected an object of this nature by studying a quasar (A “quasi-stellar radiation source” (quasar), (quasi-stellar radio…) thanks to the space telescope (A space telescope is a telescope placed beyond the atmosphere. The…) James Webb and the Chandra space observatory (The Chandra satellite is an X-ray telescope. It was launched in 1999 by the shuttle…) of NASA Quasars are powered by supermassive black holes and are extremely luminous, to the point (Graphie) of eclipsing by their brightness all the stars of their galaxy (Galaxies is a quarterly French journal devoted to the science fiction. With…) host. The object studied by Bogdán and his colleagues is in a galaxy (A galaxy is, in cosmology, an assembly of stars, gas, dust and…) called UHZ1.

The data collected was consistent with what one would expect from an OBG. Indeed, the detected X-ray emissions indicated a black hole (In astrophysics, a black hole is a massive object whose gravitational field is so intense…) in train (A train is a guided vehicle traveling on rails. train is composed of…) to feed, which reinforces the idea that UHZ1 might well be an OBG.

The researchers also compared their observations to simulations of the seeds of massive black holes growing rapidly, finding a significant match. UHZ1 may therefore well be the first OBG candidate, offering strong evidence for the formation of massive black holes by direct collapse in the early Universe.

The authors however specify the limits of their research and insist on the fact that other studies are necessary before confirming the existence of the seeds of massive black holes and their link with the growth of supermassive black holes in the nascent Universe.

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