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In a groundbreaking discovery, scientists found the furthest quasar still known – and it’s home to a seriously supermassive black hole.
Astronomers led by researchers at the University of Arizona have spotted the bright quasar about 13.03 billion light years from Earth. Quasars are among the brightest objects in the universe, quasars are bright, active galactic nuclei powered by supermassives black holes that actively feed on nearby material.
When this material is sucked in, quasars emit ultra-bright beams of electromagnetic radiation. Scientists suspect that these bright, ultramassive objects could actually be an evolutionary step for some galaxies. In fact, scientists estimate that, on average, this particular quasar’s black hole ingests an amount of mass equivalent to 25 suns each year.
This quasar, called J0313-1806, can be dated only 670 million years later the Big Bang (the universe at that time was only 5% of its current age), making it the most distant and oldest quasar ever found. This quasar also hosts a supermassive black hole with a mass equal to 1.6 billion of our suns.
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A record quasar
While this new quasar is incredibly old and distant, the team’s observations also showed evidence that there is a circulating superheated gas wind the galaxy’s supermassive black hole, with this gas traveling at one-fifth the speed of light, according to a statement. If this strong wind driven by a quasar coming from the most distant quasar ever spotted was not interesting enough, the team also noted extremely active star formation activity in the galaxy holding the quasar.
It is estimated that J0313-1806 creates around 200 solar masses each year, compared to a solar mass of our Milky Way per year, according to the release.
“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,” lead author Feige Wang, a Hubble member of the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory, said in the same statement.
Quasar survey
Now, because of their close relationship, scientists believe that by studying quasars they can learn more about the birth of objects and the actual behavior of supermassive black holes.
While this quasaris is only 20 million light years from Earth that the one that last held the title of “most distant quasar”, the new record holder ‘s supermassive black hole is approximately twice as heavy as that of its predecessor. This detail could change the way scientists understand the relationship between these supermassive and super bright cosmic objects.
“This is the first evidence of how a supermassive black hole affects its host galaxy around it,” Wang said. “From observations of less distant galaxies, we know it has to happen, but we’ve never seen it happen so early in the universe.”
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How to make a supermassive black hole
Quasars like J0313-1806 which already accumulated such immensely massive black holes in such a short time in the early universe have puzzled scientists for years. While black holes can be created when stars explode supernova and the collapse and smaller black holes may merge, eventually accumulating mass, these ultra-massive early-universe quasars remain a mystery. How did they get so massive so quickly?
With this “new” quasar to study, this team is focusing on how a supermassive black hole could have gained such mass and formed in such a short time. The quasar black hole is too massive to be explained by some old theories. In fact, the team believes that even if the black hole formed as early as 100 million years after the Big Bang and grew as fast as possible, it would still be only 10,000 times as massive as our sun. – and that’s 1.6 billion times more. massive.
“This tells you that whatever you do, the seed of this black hole must have been formed by a different mechanism,” co-author Xiaohui Fan, professor and associate director of the Department of Astronomy at the University of Arizona. “In this case, the one that involves large amounts of primordial and cold hydrogen gas that collapses directly into a seed black hole …” For the black hole to reach the size we see with J0313-1806, it would have to be ‘it started with a seed black hole of at least 10,000 solar masses, and that would only be possible in the direct collapse scenario. “
The team hopes to find more quasars “born” around the same time in the early universe to help them explore further and better understand how these massive and powerful objects were born.
“Our quasar investigation covers a very wide field, allowing us to scan almost half the sky,” said co-author Jinyi Yang, a Peter A. Strittmatter Fellow at Steward Observatory, in the same statement. “We have selected more candidates who we will follow up on with more detailed observations.”
Yang added that future observations with a space telescope like that of NASA James Webb Space Telescope could push this research even further.
“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.”
This work was accepted for publication in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters and was presented on January 12, 2021 at the 237th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society.
Email Chelsea Gohd at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter @chelsea_gohd. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
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