A team of astronomers from the Gemini International Observatory has discovered a supermassive black hole that appeared just 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang. It turns out that the object absorbs matter at an extreme rate, ten times higher than the theoretically possible rate. The study was published in the scientific journal magazine Nature Astronomy (NatAstron).
The very greedy black hole was named LID-568. It was found using intense X-ray radiation using the James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRSpec integrated spectrograph.
NIRSpec allowed the team to gain a full view of its target and its surroundings, which led to the discovery of unexpectedly strong outbursts of gas around the center of the black hole. The speed and size of these outflows led the team to conclude that most of LID-568’s mass growth may have occurred in a single period of rapid accumulation (absorption).
Astronomers found that LID-568 is consuming matter 40 times faster than the maximum possible rate, called the Eddington limit.
This limit expresses the maximum brightness a black hole can achieve, as well as how fast it can consume matter to balance the external pressure created by the heat of the falling matter, compressed by the internal gravitational force.
The discovery provided a new perspective on the formation of supermassive black holes from smaller “seeds” that, according to modern theories, emerged either as a result of the destruction of the first stars in the Universe (light seeds) or the collapse of gas clouds. (heavy seeds). So far there has been no real confirmation of these theories.
According to scientists, LID-568 showed that supermassive black holes can emerge in a single accretion episode, regardless of the type of seed.
Earlier astronomers recorded “Superluminous” radiation from a near-Earth quasar.
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Source: Gazeta
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