A research team led by astronomers from Harvard University has discovered the most distant supermassive black hole seen so far, as it arose when the universe was about 470 million years after the Big Bang, with a huge mass that remains a great mystery until now.
A supermassive black hole is the largest type of black hole, with a mass of hundreds of thousands or millions to billions of times the mass of the Sun. Observational evidence indicates that almost every large galaxy contains a supermassive black hole at its center. For example, the Milky Way galaxy contains a supermassive black hole at its center called Sagittarius A*.
To reach these results, which were published in two studies in the journals “Nature Astronomy” and “The Astrophysical Journal Letters,” scientists examined data issued by NASA’s Chandra Space Observatory, which aims to monitor X-rays coming from distant celestial bodies, and the James Webb Space Telescope. Also for NASA.
Jets of X-rays
According to the study, bursts of
The galaxy is located in the direction of a galaxy cluster called Abell 2744, which is located 3.5 billion light-years from Earth. But with further study, scientists confirmed that it is much farther away from the cluster, as it is 13.2 billion light-years away from Earth.
The hole is located in a galaxy belonging to a galaxy cluster called Abell 2744 and is located 3.5 billion light-years from Earth (NASA)
As the black hole devours the massive matter surrounding it, which usually consists of stars, dust clouds and gas, that matter rotates very quickly in the huge accretion disk that revolves around the hole. This speed causes the temperature of the disc material to rise strongly, and as a result a huge amount of X-rays are released from it.
Scientists can accurately monitor and calculate the flux of Extremely hot gases emit X-rays in UHZ1, a sign of a supermassive black hole, according to a NASA press release.
According to the study, the mass of the giant black hole at the center of the galaxy “UHZ1” was estimated to be between 10 and 100 million suns, and thus it has a mass equal to all the stars of the galaxy that contains it, and this represents a mystery for scientists in this range, as it is supposed to represent The mass of a supermassive black hole is only 10% of its galaxy.
This research team suggests that the reason for this is related to the way that black hole was created, as they believe that this black hole was formed directly from the collapse of a huge cloud of gas and not from star explosions, which is actually a theory that scientists currently assume for the emergence of the first supermassive black holes.
