Astronomers have found three black holes in an ancient galaxy
In the early universe, supermassive black holes could grow and converge faster than some models suggest. Astronomers have discovered three actively absorbing black holes in one distant galaxy. Two of them are located close to each other and are likely to merge over time, while the third is located at a considerable distance from the center. The fact that the discovery told about the growth of black holes in the early Universe is in the material of Izvestia.
Three objects in one galaxy
An international team led by specialists from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics has discovered three active supermassive black holes in the galaxy J0148-4214. The results of the study are published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. The galaxy is located at a distance of more than 12.5 billion light-years from Earth, so scientists observe it as it was about 1.2 billion years after the Big Bang.
Two black holes are located in the central region of the galaxy at a distance of about 620 light-years from each other. The third is much further away — about 5.5 thousand light-years from the center. All three objects actively absorb the surrounding matter, which forms disks rotating around them.
Hannah Ubler, head of the research group at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics and lead author of the paper
This is the first evidence of the existence of three active black holes in the same galaxy in the distant universe.
Different weights and growth rates
According to the researchers, the mass of the largest black hole is about 80 million times the mass of the Sun. The other two objects are much smaller: their mass is estimated at about 600 thousand and 2 million times the mass of the Sun. At the same time, the largest black hole did not turn out to be the fastest growing.
The most active substance absorbs an object weighing about 600 thousand tons. The suns. According to scientists, its growth rate exceeds the Eddington limit, the theoretical limit of the accretion rate, that is, the flow of matter to the black hole, in the basic models. This behavior may help explain how some black holes reached enormous sizes in the early stages of the universe's existence.
Giovanni Mazzolari, researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics and co-author of the study
Data from the James Webb Space Telescope allowed us not only to detect three black holes, but also to estimate their masses, accretion rate, and stellar mass of the galaxy. We found that the total stellar mass is about 1.3 billion solar masses, and black holes make up a significant portion of it.
How astronomers found black holes
It is impossible to see black holes directly, so the researchers studied the hydrogen radiation in the galaxy. Under the influence of strong gravity, gas near black holes moves at high speed, leaving characteristic features in the spectrum of light. In the central region of J0148-4214, scientists found a complex radiation pattern that best explained the presence of two closely spaced objects rather than one.
The observations were carried out using the James Webb Space Telescope and its instrument operating in the integrated field spectroscopy mode. It allowed us to study how the characteristics of light vary in different parts of the galaxy, even though the two central objects could not be distinguished as separate points.
According to the researchers, without such a detailed analysis, astronomers could mistake the radiation from all three black holes for the signal of a single object. The authors believe that other distant galaxies may also hide several growing black holes that have not yet been detected.
Possible merger
According to scientists, two black holes in the central part of the galaxy may merge over the next few hundred million years. As a result, an even more massive object is formed. Such mergers could play an important role in the rapid growth of black holes in the early universe, when there was relatively little time for the formation of cosmic giants.
Roberto Maiolino, professor at the University of Cambridge and co-author of the study
These results are extremely interesting. They indicate that black hole mergers could have been an additional fast path for their growth in the early universe.
The origin of the third black hole remains a mystery. According to one hypothesis, it appeared on the outskirts of the galaxy after a previous merger: if gravitational waves are emitted unevenly during such an event, the resulting black hole may receive an impulse and shift away from the center. According to another version, the object is gradually moving towards the central region and may interact with two other black holes in the future.
The authors of the study believe that searching for such systems will help reconstruct the history of black hole mergers and better understand how supermassive objects managed to form in the early stages of the universe's existence. However, it is not yet known how common such systems are in distant galaxies.
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