Astronomers Discovered Galaxies, Caught In The Web Of A Black Hole
Using the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large telescope (VLT), astronomers discovered six galaxies in the early Universe surrounding a supermassive black hole. This is the first time such a close group has been observed at such an early epoch – less than one billion years after the Big Bang. The discovery provides a better understanding of how giant gravitational monsters like the one at the center of the Milky Way were able to form and reach such huge sizes in such a short time. The results of observations and conclusions of scientists are presented in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
“Our work was aimed at revealing the nature of perhaps the most mysterious astronomical objects – supermassive black holes in the early Universe. These are truly extreme systems and today we don’t have a good explanation for their existence”, says Marco Mignoli, lead author of the study from the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics.
As part of the research, astronomers have identified several galaxies surrounding a supermassive black hole. All of them lie inside a cosmic gas “web” that extends over a distance more than 300 times the size of the Milky Way. At the points where the fibers intersect, galaxies are localizing and growing. And along the fibers, there may be gas flows that feed both star formation in galaxies and the central supermassive black hole.
The light from the huge web-like structure, in the center of which is a black hole with a mass of a billion solar cells, came to us from an era when the Universe was only 0.9 billion years old.
“Our finding adds an important piece to the unfinished puzzle that is the theory of the formation and growth of these extreme but relatively numerous objects, so close in time to the Big Bang,” – added Roberto Gilli, co – author of the Study by the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics.
These results make a great contribution to our understanding of the formation and development of supermassive black holes and large-scale cosmic structures. ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), currently under construction in Chile, with its powerful receivers, will be able to continue this research by observing many more faint galaxies around supermassive black holes in the early Universe.
