The discovery provides important information about how these extreme objects formed and grew so soon after the Big Bang.

Researchers have discovered a supermassive black hole that existed when the Universe was less than a billion years old. Moreover, the black hole appears to be surrounded by at least six galaxies enveloped in gas. It therefore looks a bit like a cosmic ‘spider web’. It is a special discovery. Because it offers us more insight into how supermassive holes form and have reached their enormous dimensions so quickly.

Cosmic spider web
Researchers tracked down the cosmic spider web using ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). The observations show various galaxies entangled in a web of gas around a supermassive black hole of no less than a billion solar masses. The entire spider web is 300 times the size of the Milky Way. The light received from the web dates back to the time when the universe was very young: about 900 million years old. “The cosmic web filaments are like the threads of a spider web,” explains researcher Marco Mignoli. “The galaxies are located and grow where the filaments intersect. And the gas, which feeds both the galaxies and the central supermassive black hole, flows past these filaments. ”

Artist’s impression of the web of the supermassive black hole, surrounded by six galaxies that are entangled in the web. Image: ESO / L. Calçada

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The discovery is an important piece in the still incomplete puzzle about how it is possible that the very young universe already housed enormous objects. The young universe has long been a mystery to astronomers. Various studies have found adult galaxies and even supermassive black holes with several billion times the mass of our sun in the very young universe (see box). And that is quite strange. It means that the first black holes, which may have been created by the collapse of the first stars, grew very quickly. Otherwise, they would never have reached masses of a billion suns within the first 900 million years of the universe’s existence. However, astronomers grapple with the question of how these objects could collect so much gas in such a short time to account for their size. However, the structure now discovered offers a satisfying explanation: the discovered spider web and the galaxies within it contain enough gas to rapidly grow the central black hole into a supermassive giant.

Supermassive black holes
Supermassive black holes are located in the center of galaxies. They can be millions and even billions of times heavier than our sun. Although they are common today, it is unclear exactly when they first formed and how many existed in the young Universe. Research with the help of powerful telescopes still regularly leads to the discovery of new, supermassive black holes. For example, astronomers discovered last year 83 supermassive black holes in the very young universe.-

The research confirms the theory that black holes can grow rapidly in large, web-like structures that contain large amounts of gas to feed on. “This research was mainly driven by a desire to understand some of the most challenging astronomical objects: supermassive black holes in the early Universe,” says Mignoli. “Until now we had no good explanation for the existence of these extreme systems.” The discovery therefore provides very important information about how these extreme objects arose so soon after the Big Bang and so quickly reached their enormous dimensions.

Web
It means we now have a better understanding of how the black holes formed and grew so soon after the Big Bang: thanks to the web. But how did this web come about? Astronomers think so giant halos of dark matter underlie it. These are great sources of gravity filled with dark matter particles. Researchers suspect that these vast areas of invisible matter attracted enormous amounts of gas early in the history of the Universe. Subsequently, a web-like structure emerged from this gas and the invisible matter, in which galaxies and black holes saw the light of day. “Our discovery supports the idea that the farthest and most massive black holes originated within mass-rich dark matter halos in large-scale structures,” concluded researcher Colin Norman.

The findings from the study are very illuminating. In addition, this is the first time such a close-knit group has been observed so soon after the Big Bang. Although the discovery of six galaxies in the web is quite an achievement in itself, it could well be that there are many more galaxies in the web. “We think we have only seen the tip of the iceberg,” says researcher Barbara Balmaverde. “The few galaxies discovered around this supermassive black hole so far are probably just the brightest.” And so research continues. However, we have to wait a while for the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) that ESO is currently building in the Atacama Desert. This will be the largest optical / near infrared telescope in the world. Equipped with the most powerful instruments, this telescope will be able to reveal multiple fainter galaxies around huge black holes in the very young universe. And that will bring the solution to this cosmic mystery even closer.