Astronomers discover 83 supermassive black holes 13 billion light-years away from Earth

Astronomers discover 83 supermassive black holes 13 billion light-years away from Earth

Astronomers have discovered 83 quasars powered by supermassive black holes located 13 billion light-years away from Earth, at a time when the universe was less than 10% of its current age. According to Michael Strauss, a professor at Princeton University in the United States, it is remarkable that such dense and massive objects could have formed so soon after the Big Bang. He said in a statement that understanding how black holes could form in the primitive universe and how common they were was a challenge for cosmological models.

This discovery, published in The Astrophysical Journal, dramatically increases the number of black holes known at this time and reveals, for the first time, how common they are at the beginning of the history of the universe. In addition, it provides new information on the effect of black holes on the physical state of gas in the early universe during its first billion years.

The supermassive black holes, located in the center of the galaxies, can be millions, even billions of times more massive than the Sun. Although they are widespread today, it is unclear when they were formed and how many existed in the distant early universe.

A supermassive black hole becomes visible as the gas accumulates on it, making it shine like a quasar.

Previous studies were sensitive only to the rarest, brightest quasars, and therefore to the most massive black holes. The new discoveries explore the population of weaker quasars, powered by black holes of a mass comparable to most black holes observed in the current universe.