A new study suggests processes took place in the early universe to create a black hole with several billion solar masses.
Supermassive black holes are among the heaviest objects in the universe. But it’s still difficult for scientists to understand how some could gain a mass billions of times greater than the mass of the Sun. Especially when it comes to the early Universe, theoretically such supermassive objects could not exist, but when they still do, ScienceAlert writes.
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Scientists have long puzzled over how black holes with billions of times the mass of the sun could have arisen in the early universe. The existence of such holes was confirmed by space observations when astronomers discovered a galaxy that arose 12.3 billion years ago and had a black hole at its center with a mass of 34 billion times that of the Sun. In another galaxy that appeared 12.1 billion years ago, an even heavier black hole was discovered – its mass exceeds the mass of the Sun by 40 billion times.
According to the theory, such black holes could not have existed when the Universe was only 1.5 – 1.7 billion years old, because in the conditions of the early Universe they would not have had enough time to gain such a large mass. But scientists from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in the US say that if these black holes exist, then what seems impossible is actually possible.
They created supercomputer simulations to learn how extremely heavy black holes might have formed in the early universe. According to astrophysicist Yuying Ni, one of the authors of the new study, one of the ways such space monsters can arise is when several very massive galaxies merge.
Scientists now know that a black hole can gain mass not only by absorbing surrounding matter, but also by colliding with another black hole. According to Nee, the second option causes the black hole to gain mass more quickly. Although the supermassive hole obtained as a result of the merger will not have the total mass of the objects that formed it, since some of the matter will fly into space.
The scientists’ new modeling has shown that supermassive black holes with a mass exceeding 10 times the mass of the Sun may appear several billion years after the Big Bang, when new stars, galaxies, and black holes are actively forming at their centers. billion times.
One of the models showed that this was possible when three very large galaxies with very heavy black holes collided and they began the process of merging into a single object. The mass of each galaxy is 10 times the mass of the Milky Way.
Scientists believe that galaxies and black holes merged much faster in that distant epoch, meaning that extremely heavy black holes could also form very quickly. So far, scientists cannot say exactly how quickly this merger occurred, but the scientists say that the fact that such events occur frequently will likely be confirmed by future space observations.
Focus He already wrote that according to the new theory of the origin of the universe, there were not one but two Big Bangs in the beginning. Moreover, the second explosion contributed to the emergence of mysterious dark matter.
As for other discoveries of astronomers, then Focus He had already written that a recently discovered comet could outshine the stars in the sky. And that will happen in the near future.
Source: Focus
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