Many black holes are almost as old as the galaxies in which they are located. Astronomers have long puzzled how the objects in the early phase of the universe could grow to enormous size in a short time. Now a team led by Emanuele Paolo Farina from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg has taken an important step forward in a study in "The Astrophysical Journal".
With the help of the "Very Large Telescope" (VLT) of the European Southern Observatory (Eso) in Chile, the astronomers discovered gigantic gas reserves in the vicinity of some of the first galaxies in the universe. The huge gas and dust clouds extend up to about 100,000 light years from the center of the respective galaxy and could have served as food for the supermassive black holes in the region.
Overall, the researchers around Farina had observed 31 so-called quasars with the VLT. These are active galaxies with a supermassive black hole in the center. The black hole consumes large amounts of matter that illuminates extremely brightly before disappearing behind its event horizon. The glow can be seen across the entire universe.
ESO / Farina et al .; ALMA (ESO / NAOJ / NRAO), Decarli et al.
Gas cloud in space: food for young, super-massive black holes
Glimpse of childhood in the universe
In order to find out what the quasars looked like when they were young, the researchers had to look very deep into space: the light from the examined objects had been traveling to us for around 12.5 billion years. It shows the galaxies at a time when the universe was only around a billion years old.
The researchers found gigantic gas and dust clouds of several billion solar masses each in twelve quasars. These clouds are a sufficient supply for the extreme hunger of the early mass monsters, they report. The black holes could have absorbed enormous amounts of matter in the young universe in a comparatively short time. In this way they reached billions of times the mass of our sun.
more on the subject
This is also surprising because the first galaxies simultaneously produced many more stars than today, which also required cosmic raw materials. "We can now show for the first time that galaxies in their vicinity have enough food to enable both the growth of super-massive black holes and the formation of numerous stars," says Farina.