Lurking in the remote space 13 billion light-years away is a kind of luminous “” 1.6 billion times bigger than the sun. Astronomers recently discovered the beast of the Milky Way, which is the oldest of its kind.
Ancient peopleAn international team led by researchers at the University of Arizona defined it as J0313-1806, which is defined as the bright, huge, long-range galactic core that emits a lot of energy. Its history can be traced back to 670 million years after the Big Bang, when the baby world was only 5% of its current age.
This makes it the most distant-meaning the earliest-quasar. Recently, a quasar that held the previous record was discovered in 201
J0313-1806 is only 20 million light-years away from its predecessor, but itsIt weighs twice as much-challenging known theories about the formation of black holes in the early universe.
The research team published the results at the 237th meeting of the virtual American Astronomical Society this week and published them in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Lead author Feige Wang said in a statement: “This is the earliest evidence of how a supermassive black hole affects the host galaxy around it.” “By observing galaxies far away, we know that this must happen. Yes, but we have never seen it happen so early in the universe.”
Scientists believe that a supermassive black hole will swallow a large amount of matter, such as gas or stars, to form an accretion disk that rotates around itself, thereby forming a quasar. With such a huge amount of energy, these objects are the brightest in the universe.
The celestial body is also the first of its kind, providing evidence for the pouring of hot gaseous gas in a black hole at one-fifth the speed of light. This is a surprising discovery.
However, the formation of quasars is still a problem.
Black holes usually form when stars explode, die, and collapse, and as black holes merge over time, supermassive black holes gradually grow. However, the quasars in the early universe were too young to become so fast in this way.
The supermassive black hole at the center of J0313-1806 is so large-still growing because it absorbs about 25 solar equivalents per year-cannot be explained by many previous assumptions.
Co-author Fan Xiaohui said: “This tells you that no matter what you do, the seed of this black hole must be formed by a different mechanism.” “In this case, the gas involving a large amount of primitive cold hydrogen directly collapses into the seed black hole.”
In this case, it is not the star collapsing into the black hole, but a large amount of cold hydrogen gas.
When quasars explode around, they eliminate the large amount of cold gas needed to form stars. Therefore, scientists believe that the supermassive black hole in the center of the galaxy may be the reason why the galaxy stops forming new stars.
Fan said: “We think these supermassive black holes are the reason why many large galaxies stop forming stars at some point.” “We have observed this kind of’quenching’ at the lower redshift, but until now, we still I don’t know how this process started in the history of the universe. This kind of quasar is the earliest evidence that the quenching may have occurred very early.”
J0313-1806 pumps out 200 pieces of solar energy every year. For comparison,Stars are formed “leisily” with approximately one solar mass each year.
Wang said: “This is a relatively high star formation rate, similar to the star formation rate observed in other quasars of similar age. It tells us that the host galaxy is growing very fast.”
Fan added: “These quasars may still be in the process of establishing their supermassive black holes.” “Over time, the effluent of the quasars heats up and expels all the gas out of the Milky Way, and then the black hole no longer has food for food. , And will stop growing. This is evidence of how these first large galaxies and their quasars grew.”
Quasars provide a rare understanding of the formation of galaxies at the beginning of the universe, but researchers need a more powerful telescope to study it further.NASAThe plan is to start this year and will allow more detailed investigations.
Wang said: “Using ground-based telescopes, we can only see a point source of light.” “Future observations may make it possible to resolve quasars in more detail, showing the structure of quasars and the distance the wind extends to their galaxies, which will enable We have a better understanding of its evolutionary stage.”