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Biggest, brightest black hole ever found challenges what we know of the early universe

Black hole and bright quasar. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser


Scott Sutherland
Meteorologist/Science Writer

Thursday, February 26, 2015, 3:21 PM - An international team of astronomers has discovered a surprising denizen of the early universe - a black hole so large, but so young, that it strains the limits of what scientists know about that period of the cosmos.

Gazing into the deepest reaches of space and thus the furthest reaches of time, to when the universe was only 875 million year old, astronomers have discovered a quasar that is simply too big for being so young.


DID YOU KNOW? A quasar, or 'quasi-stellar radio source', is a supermassive black hole with an ultra-luminous disk of matter surrounding it, typically hundreds of times brighter than our galaxy. 



Mass and brightness of known quasars, compared to
SDSS J0100+2802. Credit: Zhaoyu Li/Shanghai Observatory

After analyzing the mass and brightness of this object, named SDSS J0100+2802, the team estimated that it was roughly 3,000 times more massive than the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way - thus the equivalent of 12 billion Suns - and it was around 4,000 times brighter than our galaxy. Of all the 200,000 black hole quasars that have been found so far, that makes this one the biggest and brightest that astronomers have ever seen.

What's baffling about this object is not necessarily its extreme size and brightness, though, but that it could achieve these extremes at such a young age.

"How can a quasar so luminous, and a black hole so massive, form so early in the history of the universe, at an era soon after the earliest stars and galaxies have just emerged?" said Xiaohui Fan, a professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona, who co-authored the study, according to UA news. "And what is the relationship between this monster black hole and its surrounding environment, including its host galaxy?"

"Forming such a large black hole so quickly is hard to interpret with current theories," said Fuyan Bian, a study co-author from Australian National University, according to ANU News. "However this black hole at the centre of the quasar gained enormous mass in a short period of time."

The current scientific consensus on the growth of these objects says that they should be limited by the very light that's produced by the quasar as the black hole gobbles up matter. This is due to the radiation pressure exerted by the light, as the photons streaming away from the quasar interact with the matter streaming inward, exerting a push away from the black hole. Despite that limiting factor, though, this object has grown to gargantuan size in a very short time.

Some potential explanations for this?

According to what Harvard Smithsonian astronomer Avi Loeb told National Geographic, it's possible that some of the first stars to form were much larger than we thought. Rather than just a few hundred times the mass of our Sun, he said they may have accumulated enough hydrogen to grow to the equivalent of thousands or possibly even a million solar masses. These ultra-massive stars, if they existed, would form much larger black holes when they eventually collapsed and died, effectively giving them a 'head start' on accumulating mass to the size of this early quasar.

Another possibility is that SDSS J0100+2802 is the product of the joining together of two ancient galaxies, and thus the merger of their supermassive black holes.

"This quasar is very unique," said Xue-Bing Wu, the lead author of the study from Peking University, according to UA News. "Just like the brightest lighthouse in the distant universe, its glowing light will help us to probe more about the early universe."

Sources: UA News | ANU News | National GeographicNature

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