2023-11-07 20:03:09
Astronomers have discovered the most distant black hole ever detected in X-ray using the Chandra and James-Webb space telescopes. The X-ray emission is a telltale signature of a growing supermassive black hole. This discovery could explain how some of the first supermassive black holes in the Universe formed.
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Competent astrophysicists all agree that at the heart of the vast majority of large galaxies are compact stars containing at least a million and sometimes several billion solar masses that behave as predicted by black hole theory. . There still remain some doubts that we can keep in mind out of caution, but the existence of supermassive black holessupermassive black holes does seem to have become a definitive achievement of astrophysics, even if surprises are possible with the waves gravitational or future images of theEvent Horizon Telescope.
However, we still do not really know how supermassive black holes formed, although it is now believed that their growth was mainly due to the accretion of matter from cold filaments.
Several hypotheses have been considered which, through the discoveries of recent decades, have successively come to the forefront, such as that of the existence of primordial stars of very large masses or even giant black holes produced during the Big Bang.
One of these hypotheses has just gained a little more weight following joint observations in the infrared infrared of the James-Webb space telescope and in the field of X-rays X-rays by another space telescope in orbitorbit since 1999, the now legendary ChandraChandra.
The discovery has just been published in Nature Astronomybut it is in fact divided into three articles which can be consulted with free access on arXiv.
Abell 2744, a gravitational magnifying glass to discover distant galaxies
It all started with Chandra’s detection of an milky. Abell 2744 is also famous as the Pandora cluster. It seems to have resulted from the mergerfusion of four smaller galactic clusters but above all, it seems rich in dark matterdark matter, which therefore gives rise to a gravitational lens effectgravitational lens that astronomersastronomers have been using for some time to form by magnifying glass effect images of distant galaxies in the visible and near infrared.
Abell 2744 had already been used in this way with the Hubble telescope and more recently with the James-Webb telescope. This time, it made it possible to discover that UHZ1 was seen as it was only 470 million years after the Big BangBig Bang. Chandra data shows that the X-ray source associated with the galaxy has all the characteristics of a growing supermassive black hole, so astronomers have discovered the most distant black hole ever observed in X-rays.
Analyzes of the data collected with James-Webb and Chandra show that we are in the presence of an unusual situation because while there generally exists a factor of 1,000 between the mass of a supermassive black hole and the mass of the matter in the form of starsstars in its host galaxy, it appears here that the giant black hole of UHZ1, with its 10 to 100 million solar masses, contains as much matter as all the stars in the galaxy where it lived in the remote past that photonsphotons having traveled for more than 13 billion years show us today.
Comments on the discovery with UHZ1. To obtain a fairly accurate French translation, click on the white rectangle at the bottom right. English subtitles should then appear. Then click on the nut to the right of the rectangle, then on “Subtitles” and finally on “Automatically translate”. Choose “French”. © Chandra X-ray Observatory
A direct collapse of clouds of matter into giant black holes
The black hole was therefore at an early stage of growth never before observed where its mass is similar to that of its host galaxy. Above all, observations now support the thesis that supermassive black holes would form directly by gravitational collapse of a very large cloud of matter.
Indeed, the black hole’s large mass at a young age as well as the amount of X-rays it produces and the brightness of the galaxy detected by Webb all agree with theoretical predictions made in 2017 by the co-author of a published articles, Priyamvada Natarajan from Yale University, explains a NASA press release. “ We believe this is the first detection of a Outsize Black Hole (which can be translated as oversized black hole) and the best evidence so far obtained that some black holes form from enormous clouds of gas. For the first time, we see a brief stage in which a supermassive black hole weighs about as much as the stars in its galaxy, before falling behind », declares Natarajan.
Webb’s data used in the papers is part of a research program called Ultradeep NirspecNirspec and nirCamnirCam ObserVations before the Epoch of Reionization (UNCOVER).
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