Scientists have discovered a primordial black hole that appeared in the early universe, and this discovery could completely change our understanding of the formation of galaxies.
The discovery of a previously unknown, hidden primordial black hole that appeared 750 million years after the Big Bang could mean that it is just the “tip of the iceberg” among similar objects that are still hidden from us, scientists say.
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Using the ALMA ground-based radio telescope, scientists have discovered a supermassive black hole at the center of the ancient galaxy COS-87259, which formed just 750 million years after the birth of the universe. This primordial black hole is 1 billion times the mass of the Sun.
Astronomers believe that such a very rare hidden object that existed early in the life of the universe indicates that there were many more such space monsters in early space than scientists believe. But why this happened is still unknown. Scientists believe that the supermassive black hole, which is hidden by a dense cloud of gas and dust, is still growing and actively absorbing the matter surrounding it.
“This could be one of the thousands of primordial black holes that are also hidden from us, and they are all inexplicably huge. It is not clear how these early black holes can have such a huge mass, but we believe that there are exactly thousands of times more than suggest current theories,” says Ryan Endsley of the University of Texas at Austin, USA.
Astronomers believe that such a very rare hidden object that existed early in the life of the universe indicates that there were many more such space monsters in early space than scientists believe.
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Photo: Scitech Daily
It is now known that black holes result from the death of huge stars when they shrink to a very small size. But then the black hole itself begins to grow, consuming gas, dust, stars and other black holes in galaxies where star formation is rampant.
When the black hole reaches a very large size, friction causes the matter entering the black hole to heat up, and they turn into quasars, giving off streams of light that are a trillion times brighter than the light of the brightest stars.
Because light travels at a fixed speed through space, the farther astronomers look into the universe, the more distant light they can detect. In this way, scientists are trying to understand what happened in the very early universe.
Simulations of an epoch spanning the first billion years of the universe’s existence show that clouds of cold gas could have coalesced into giant stars, which quickly died and turned into black holes, the scientists said. As the universe grew, these primordial black holes could collide with each other quickly, resulting in even larger supermassive black holes all over the cosmos.
But how exactly such black holes spread throughout the early universe is still a mystery. The new study says there may be thousands of them and they existed when the universe was at the dawn of its evolution. And all these black holes are yet to be discovered.
Simulations of an epoch spanning the first billion years of the universe’s existence show that clouds of cold gas could have coalesced into giant stars, which quickly died and turned into black holes, the scientists said. As the universe grew, these primordial black holes could collide with each other quickly, resulting in even larger supermassive black holes all over the cosmos.
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Photo: NASA
According to Endsley, if you solve the above riddle, you can understand exactly how the process of formation of galaxies in the early Universe took place. In any case, a new discovery may already change our understanding of the cosmos.
One possible explanation for the large distribution of primordial black holes may be that initially clouds of gas and dust “gave birth” to stars simply at an incredible rate. For example, scientists believe that in the galaxy COS-87259, the formation of new stars occurred 1000 times faster than in the Milky Way.
Focus has already written that astronomers managed to detect a gas giant planet, which, according to the theory, should not exist. This exoplanet is only a few times smaller than its star and simply could not appear next to it. But still it exists.
Focus also wrote that the mysterious dark energy, according to scientists, can not only help the Universe expand, but can also lead to its contraction to its original state. Astronomers believe that our universe can survive several rebirths.
As Focus already wrote, a recent observation by astronomers helped to detect huge black holes in dwarf galaxies and they are going to collide with each other.
