It is the most voracious of its kind that we have ever seen and, until today, we did not think it could exist. It is a supermassive black hole located in the center of a galaxy called LID-568, formed just 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang, and which seems to devour matter at an impressive speed of more than 40 times the theoretical maximumknown as Eddington limit. This is reflected in the pages of Nature Astronomy; was a team of researchers coordinated by the Gemini International Observatory/NSF NoirLab, among whom are four Italian scientists from the National Institute of Astrophysics (INAF), according to whom this discovery could help unravel one of the greatest mysteries of the primordial universenamely, how supermassive black holes become so massive so soon after the Big Bang.
The theoretical limits
First, let’s review some theory. He Eddington limit It is a physical law that sets the maximum threshold of matter that a black hole can consume in a given period of time. Basically, when a black hole actively accumulates large amounts of matter, it does not fall directly into the gravitational well, but rather first swirls around the inner edge of the disk that crosses the horizon towards the black hole. The incredible amount of friction and gravity heats this disk to extremely high temperatures, causing it to glow. The problem with radiation is that it exerts a strong pressure towards the outside that, at a certain point, corresponds to the gravitational force towards the interior of the black hole, thus preventing matter from getting closer. This, in simple terms, is the Eddington limit.
Beyond the limit
However, according to astronomers’ new hypothesis, it is possible for supermassive black holes to exceed the Eddington limit, in a phenomenon called super-Eddingtonand reach masses that defy the laws of physics. In this case, the researchers used the James Webb Space Telescope to make observations of galaxies identified by the Chandra X-ray Observatory that were bright in the X band but faint at other wavelengths. Focusing on the galaxy LID-568, they were able to identify its exact position and observe that the supermassive black hole is relatively small. However, the amount of light produced by the matter surrounding its disk is much higher than what a black hole of the same mass should produce.
A ravenous black hole
From further calculations, the researchers estimated that the accretion rate of the supermassive black hole is u40 times higher than Eddington’s limit. “That black hole is having a feast,” says astronomer and co-author Julia Scharwächter. “This extreme case shows that a fast feeding mechanism above the Eddington limit is a possible explanation for why we see such massive black holes so early in the Universe.” This discovery could therefore help us better understand the early Universe. “The discovery of an accreting super-Eddington black hole suggests that a significant portion of mass growth can occur during a single episode of rapid feedingregardless of whether the black hole originated from a light or heavy seed,” concludes author Hyewon Suh.
Article originally published in WIRED Italy. Adapted by Mauricio Serfatty Godoy.
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