Scientists discover supermassive black hole dating back to the beginning of time
At the centre of most spiral and elliptical galaxies is a complicated astronomical phenomenon: a Supermassive Black Hole (SMBH). In comparison to regular black holes, SMBHs are enormous in size, often hundreds of thousands to billions of times larger than the sun itself. Now, a study published in the journal Nature on Feb. 25, 2015, suggests that an SMBH with a mass approximately 12 billion times greater than that of our sun exists in our universe.
This artist’s impression of a growing Supermassive Black Hole illustrates the complexity of these enormous astronomical phenomena – which can be billions of times larger than our sun.
Black holes are mathematically-determined regions of space that exhibit strong gravitational pulls on surrounding particles and electromagnetic radiation. The gravitational attraction exhibited by black holes is so powerful that nothing can escape from a black hole’s pull.
The discovered SMBH, SDSS J010013.02+280225.8 (SDSS), is 12.8 billion light years away from Earth, exhibiting light roughly 420 trilliontimes brighter than that of the sun. Especially interesting to the researchers at the Carnegie Institution for Science (CIS), where the discovery was made, is SDDS’s redshift.
Redshift is a measurement of how the wavelength of light is stretched by the expansion of the Universe as the light reaches the Earth. SDSS’s redshift is z=6.30, making it one of only 40 other quasars – quasi-stellar radio sources – that has a redshift greater than six. SDSS’s redshift also suggests that the black hole was formed roughly 900 million years after the Big Bang.
“This quasar is very unique,” said Xue-Bing Wu, a Peking University and Kavli Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics researcher who led the team that discovered SDSS, in a press release for the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). “Just like the brightest lighthouse in the distant Universe, [SDSS’s] glowing light will help us to prove more about the early Universe.”
SDSS’s size suggests that it might be one of the largest black holes of those that exhibit a redshift of over six. It is important to avoid suggesting that SDSS is one of the largest black holes in the Universe, as our understanding of certain cosmic phenomenon is incomplete.
“This quasar is a unique laboratory to study the way that a quasar’s black hole and host galaxy co-evolve,” said Yuri Beletsky, a CIS researcher, in the same release. “Our findings indicate that, in the early Universe, quasar black holes probably grew faster than their host galaxies, although more research is needed to confirm this idea.”
The CIS team created a method to detect quasars at redshifts of five and higher. This information was then verified by the 6.5-metre Multiple Mirror Telescope and the 8.4-metre Large Binocular Telescope in Arizona, the 6.5-metre Magellan Telescope at the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile, and the 8.2-metre Gemini North Telescope in Hawaii.