Unraveling the Mysteries: Astronomers Discover an Extremely Large Black Hole at the Universe’s Edge.

Astronomers from the University of Texas and the University of Arizona have made an intriguing discovery at the edge of the Universe—a rapidly growing black hole within one of the most extreme galaxies known. This finding sheds light on the formation of the earliest supermassive black holes and has been published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Utilizing observations from the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), a radio observatory situated in Chile, the research team has determined that the galaxy, named COS-87259, containing this newfound supermassive black hole is highly exceptional. It exhibits a star formation rate 1,000 times greater than that of our Milky Way and holds over a billion solar masses of interstellar dust. The galaxy’s brilliance emanates from both the intense burst of star formation and the growing supermassive black hole at its core.

The black hole is classified as a novel type of primordial black hole, heavily veiled in cosmic dust, emitting most of its light in the mid-infrared range of the electromagnetic spectrum. The team has also identified that this evolving supermassive black hole, commonly referred to as the active galactic nucleus, produces a powerful jet of material that traverses its host galaxy at nearly the speed of light.

Presently, nearly every galaxy harbors black holes with masses ranging from millions to billions of times that of our Sun. However, the mechanism behind the formation of these supermassive black holes remains a mystery, particularly since several such objects have been detected in the early stages of the Universe. As the light from these sources takes an extensive amount of time to reach us, we observe them as they existed in the past. In the case of COS-87259, we are witnessing it as it appeared just 750 million years after the Big Bang, accounting for approximately 5% of the current age of the Universe.

The most surprising aspect of this discovery is its detection in a relatively small area of the sky, less than ten times the size of the full Moon, suggesting the potential existence of thousands of similar sources in the early Universe. This unexpected revelation deviates from previous data.

Quasars, which are active black holes partially obscured by cosmic dust, comprised the only other known class of supermassive black holes in the early Universe. However, quasars at distances similar to COS-87259 are extremely rare, with only a few dozen scattered across the entire sky. The unexpected detection of COS-87259 and its black hole raises numerous inquiries regarding the prevalence of very early supermassive black holes and the types of galaxies where they typically form.

Ryan Endsley, the lead author of the paper and currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas, stated, “These results suggest that early supermassive black holes were often heavily obscured by dust, possibly due to the intense star formation activity in their host galaxies. This is something that others have been predicting for some years now, and it’s nice to see the first direct observational evidence supporting this scenario.”

Similar objects have been discovered in the local Universe, such as Αrp 299, where two colliding galaxies generate an intense starburst and cause a significant dimming of the growing supermassive black hole in one of the galaxies.

Endsley further adds, “While no one expected to find this type of object in the early Universe, its discovery is a step towards a much better understanding of how billion-solar-mass black holes could have formed so early in the life of the Universe, as well as how the most massive galaxies first evolved.”

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