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Hidden in a distant region of space, over 13 billion light years away, is a luminous “quasar“powered by a a supermassive black hole 1.6 billion times more massive than the sun. Astronomers recently spotted the galactic beast, marking the oldest of its kind.
The old one quasar, defined as a bright, massive, distant active galactic nucleus emitting enormous amounts of energy, was named J0313-1806 by an international team, led by researchers at the University of Arizona. It dates back an incredible 670 million years after the Big Bang – when the infant universe was only 5% of its current age.
This makes it the most distant – that is, the oldest – known quasar. The previous quasar record was also discovered recently, in 2017.
J0313-1806 is only 20 million light-years older than its predecessor, but its a supermassive black hole is twice as heavy – challenging known theories about the formation of black holes in the early universe.
The team presented their results, which will be published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, at the 237th American Astronomical Society Virtual Meeting this week.
“This is the first evidence of how a supermassive black hole affects its host galaxy around it,” lead author Feige Wang said in a statement. “From observations of less distant galaxies, we know it has to happen, but we’ve never seen it happen so early in the universe.”
NOIRLab / NSF / AURA / J. da Silva
Scientists believe that supermassive black holes swallow a huge amount of material, like gas or stars, to form an accretion disk swirling around itself – creating a quasar. These objects are the brightest in the cosmos because of this enormous amount of energy.
The celestial object is also the first of its kind to provide evidence of an outpouring of hot, gaseous wind from its black hole at one-fifth the speed of light – a startling finding.
The formation of the quasar remains a bit of an enigma, however.
Black holes typically form when a star explodes, dies, and collapses, and supermassive black holes develop when black holes merge over time. However, the quasars of the early universe are far too young to have grown so huge, so quickly, in this way.
The supermassive black hole at the center of J0313-1806 is so large – still growing as it ingests the mass equivalent of about 25 suns each year – that it cannot be explained by a number of previous hypotheses.
“This tells you that whatever you do, the seed of this black hole must have been formed by a different mechanism,” said co-author Xiaohui Fan. “In this case, one that involves large amounts of primordial, cold hydrogen gas collapsing directly into a black seed hole.”
In this scenario, rather than a star collapsing into a black hole, huge amounts of cold hydrogen gas are responsible instead.
When quasars detonate their surroundings, they remove much of the cold gas needed to form stars. For this reason, scientists believe that supermassive black holes in the center of galaxies may be the reason why galaxies stop forming new stars.
“We believe these supermassive black holes were the reason many large galaxies stopped forming stars at some point,” Fan said. “We are seeing this ‘extinction’ at lower redshifts, but until now we had no idea how far this process began in the history of the universe. This quasar is the first evidence that extinction may have taken place very early.
J0313-1806 pumps 200 solar masses per year. For comparison, the Milky Way forms stars at a “quiet pace” of about one solar mass each year.
“This is a relatively high rate of star formation, similar to that seen in other quasars of similar age, and it tells us that the host galaxy is growing very rapidly,” Wang said.
“These quasars are probably still building their supermassive black holes,” Fan added. “Over time, the flow of the quasar heats up and pushes all the gas out of the galaxy, then the black hole has nothing to eat and will stop growing. This is proof of the growth of these first massive galaxies and their quasars.
The quasar offers rare insight into the formation of galaxies at the start of the universe, but researchers need a more powerful telescope to study it further. From NASA James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled for launch this year, will allow for a more detailed investigation.
“With telescopes on the ground, we can only see a point source,” Wang said. “Future observations could help solve the quasar in more detail, show the structure of its flow and how far the wind extends in its galaxy, and that would give us a much better idea of its stage of evolution.”
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