At the center of most galaxies there are supermassive black holes, regions of space so dense that nothing that falls there, not even light, can escape. Modern telescopes have detected them even at very early moments in the evolution of the universe. The most recent, discovered by an international team with Spanish participation, is located in the heart of a galaxy that existed ‘only’ 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang, very soon if one takes into account that the great explosion that caused the Universe occurred about 13.8 billion years ago. The most surprising thing is that this object consumed matter at an impossible speed, more than 40 times the theoretical limit. The study was published this Monday in the journal ‘Nature Astronomy’.
The team, led by the Gemini International Observatory/NSF NOIRLab, used the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to observe a population of galaxies that are very bright in the X-ray part of the spectrum, but invisible in the optical and near-infrared spectrum. . The JWST has a unique infrared sensitivity that allows it to detect these weak emissions.
“Most of the early universe black holes detected by JWST are very faint (or not detectable) in X-rays, but LID-569 [como se ha bautizado el nuevo agujero negro] “It caught our attention because of its high brightness in X-rays,” says Mar Mezcua, researcher at the Institute of Space Sciences (ICE-CSIC) and the Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia (IEEC) and co-author of the study.
JWST’s NIRSpec instrument allowed the team to obtain a complete view of LID-568 and its surrounding region, leading to the unexpected discovery of powerful gas flows around the central black hole. The speed and size of these flows led the team to infer that a substantial fraction of the black hole’s mass growth may have occurred in a single episode of rapid accretion. “This serendipitous result added a new dimension to our understanding of the system and opened exciting avenues for research,” concludes Gemini Observatory/NSF NOIRLab astronomer Hyewon Suh, first author of the study.
Eddington limit
The team found that LID-568 appears to be feeding on matter at a rate 40 times the Eddington limit. This limit is related to the maximum luminosity that a black hole can reach, as well as the speed at which it can absorb matter, so that its gravitational force inward and the outward pressure generated by the heat of the compressed matter that falls towards him remain in balance. When the luminosity of LID-568 was calculated to be much higher than theoretically possible, the team knew there was something exceptional about the data.
“This black hole is having a feast,” says Julia Scharwächter, an astronomer at the Gemini International Observatory/NSF NOIRLab and co-author of the study. “This extreme case demonstrates that a fast feeding mechanism above the Eddington limit is one of the possible explanations for why we see these very heavy black holes so early in the universe.”
These results provide new insights into the formation of supermassive black holes from “seeds” of smaller black holes. Current theories suggest that the latter arise from the death of the universe’s first stars (light seeds) or from the direct collapse of gas clouds (heavy seeds). Until now, these theories lacked observational confirmation. “The discovery of a super-Eddington accretionary black hole suggests that a significant portion of mass growth can occur during a single fast feeding episode, regardless of whether the black hole originated from a light or heavy seed,” he says. Hyewon Suh.
The discovery of LID-568 also shows that it is possible for a black hole to exceed its Eddington limit and offers astronomers a great opportunity to study how this happens. It is possible that the powerful outflows observed in LID-568 act as a safety valve for the excess energy generated by extreme accretion, preventing the system from becoming too unstable. To further investigate the mechanisms at play, the team plans to follow up with observations through the James Webb.
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