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The discovery was made using the James Webb Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray observatory.
Illustration of a small galaxy from the early universe hosting an actively feeding supermassive black hole. (Image Credit: NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/ J. da Silva/M. Zamani).
New Delhi: Researchers from the US National Science Foundation have discovered an actively feeding supermassive black hole occupying the central regions of a galaxy just 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang, using observations from the James Webb Space Telescope and NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. The supermassive black hole is consuming gas and dust at a phenomenal rate, about 40 times over the theoretical limit. Astronomers may have captured an elusive phenomenon that allows black holes to grow at rapid rates at the dawn of time. Such supermassive black holes appear to occupy the cores of most galaxies, but astronomers are surprised to find them in the early universe.
Researchers are struggling to explain how the supermassive black holes discovered in the early universe could grow to such masses so soon after the Big Bang. The discovery of a relatively small supermassive black hole feasting at such extreme rates allows scientists to better understand how the first supermassive black holes in the universe formed and evolved. The object has been designated as LID-568, which stood out in the Chandra observations because of its intense X-ray emissions. The observations by the James Webb Space Telescope allowed the astronomers to probe the supermassive black hole itself, as well as the surrounding regions.
Breaching the Eddington Limit
The combined observations by the two deep space observatories allowed scientists to trace powerful outflows of gas surrounding the supermassive black hole. The size and speed of these outflows allowed the researchers to determine that much of the mass of LID-568 may have been acquired during a single episode of rapid accretion. The Eddington limit describes the maximum brightness of a black hole, as well as how fast it can absorb matter. The luminosity of LID-568 is many times the theoretical limit, and shows for the first time that it is possible for a supermassive black hole to exceed Eddingtom limit. A paper describing the findings has been published in Nature Astronomy.
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