The all-consuming black hole at the center of a dwarf galaxy in the early Universe depicted in this artist’s concept may hold important clues to the evolution of supermassive black holes in general.
Using data from NASA‘s James Webb Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray Observatory, a team of astronomers discovered this low-mass supermassive black hole just 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang. The black hole is sucking in matter at a phenomenal rate – more than 40 times the theoretical limit. Although this “feast” of a black hole is short-lived, it may help astronomers explain how supermassive black holes grew so rapidly in the early universe.
Supermassive black holes exist at the center of most galaxies, and modern telescopes continue to observe them in the surprisingly early stages of the universe’s evolution. It is difficult to understand how these black holes could grow so large so quickly. But with the discovery of a low-mass, supermassive black hole that was swallowing matter at an extraordinary rate shortly after the birth of the Universe, astronomers have gained valuable new insights into the mechanisms behind the rapid growth of black holes in the early Universe.
The black hole, named LID-568, was hidden among thousands of objects in the Chandra X-ray Observatory’s COSMOS catalog, which is the result of 4.6 million seconds of observations at Chandra. This population of galaxies is very bright in X-ray light, but invisible in optical and previous near-infrared observations. By observing Webb, astronomers were able to use the observatory’s unique infrared sensitivity to detect these faint secondary emissions, leading to the discovery of the black hole.
The speed and size of these emissions allowed the team to conclude that much of LID-568’s mass growth could have occurred in a single episode of rapid accretion.
It appears that LID-568 is feeding on matter at a rate 40 times the Eddington limit. This limit is related to the maximum amount of light that can be emitted by the material surrounding a black hole, as well as how fast it can absorb matter so that its internal gravitational force and external pressure caused by the heat of the compressed matter falling on it remain in balance.
These results provide new insight into the formation of supermassive black holes from smaller “seeds” that, according to current theories, arise either from the death of the first stars in the Universe (light seeds) or from the direct collapse of gas clouds (heavy seeds). So far, these theories have not been confirmed by observational evidence.
