This Black Hole consumes more than 40 times the Theoretical Limit

The supermassive black hole in the early Universe is the most dangerous object of its kind we’ve ever seen.

Located at the center of a galaxy called LID-568, as seen 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang, it appears to be churning through matter at a rate that is more than 40 times the rate of collapse. known as the Eddington limit.

We’ve never seen anything like this – and it’s a discovery that could help us unravel one of the great mysteries of the early Universe: how supermassive black holes become so incredibly massive in such a short time the next of the Big Bang.

“This black hole is having a party,” says astronomer Julia Scharwächter of Gemini Observatory and NSF’s NOIRLab. “This extreme case shows that the process of feeding faster than the Eddington limit is one of the possible explanations for why we see these supermassive black holes in the early Universe.”

The Eddington limit is a natural consequence of the black hole’s feeding process. When a black hole collects more matter, the material does not fall directly into the gravitational well, but begins to circulate like water around a drain, and contains only the material inside of a disc that crosses the surface of a black hole. .

Gravitational friction and gravity heat this disk to extremely hot temperatures, causing it to glow brightly. But the thing about light is that it provides a kind of pressure.

A single photon won’t do much, but the burning of a black hole accretion disk is another matter. At some point, the external radiation pressure matches the internal gravity of the black hole, preventing the material from approaching. It is the Eddington limit.

Exceeding Eddington’s gain limit is possible. It is known as super-Eddington accretion, which is when the black hole is in full motion, accreting as much mass as it can before the radiation pressure takes over. This is one way that astronomers believe that supermassive black holes could initially acquire an inexplicable mass.

Led by astronomer Hyewon Suh of the Gemini Observatory and NSF’s NOIRLab, the research team used JWST to follow recent observations of bursts of galaxies selected by the Chandra X-ray Observatory that were bright in the X -rays but darkened at other wavelengths.

When they arrived at LID-568, they had trouble determining its location through time. The constellation was very faint and difficult to see; but, by using the critical spectrograph on JWST’s NIRSpec instrument, the team determined the position of the galaxy.

The remote location of the LID-568 is amazing. Although the object is faint due to our position in the Universe, its distance means that it must be incredibly bright. Detailed observations revealed a strong outflow from the supermassive black hole, a sign of accretion as more material is deflected and blasted into space.

A rigorous analysis of the data revealed that the largest black hole is the smallest, as supermassive black holes travel; only 7.2 million times the mass of the Sun. And the amount of light produced by the material around the disk was much, much higher than a black hole of this mass should be able to produce. It suggests an accretion rate of about 40 times the Eddington limit.

In this case, the duration of the super-Eddington increase should be very short, which means that Suh and his team were very lucky to catch it. And we expect LID-568 to be a popular target for black hole scientists, giving us a rare glimpse of super-Eddington processes.

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In turn, this could help us understand the early Universe. There is evidence to suggest that the first supermassive black holes were formed not from collapsing stars as we know them, but from massive stars and gas giants, collapsing directly under gravity. This would give them light on their way to becoming the supermassive black holes we see in the Universe today. Super-Eddington accretion bursts may be another piece of the puzzle.

“The discovery of a super-Eddington black hole suggests that a large part of the mass growth can occur during a single fast feeding event,” Suh ​​says, “without regardless of whether the black hole originated from a light or heavy seed.”

Research published in The Nature of Astronomy.