from the A-long-time-ago-in-a-galaxy-far,-far-away... dept.
Quasar Discovery Sets New Distance Record:
The new discovery beats the previous distance record for a quasar set three years ago. Observations with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile confirmed the distance measurement to high precision.
Quasars occur when the powerful gravity of a supermassive black hole at a galaxy's core draws in surrounding material that forms an orbiting disk of superheated material around the black hole. The process releases tremendous amounts of energy, making the quasar extremely bright, often outshining the rest of the galaxy.
The black hole at the core of J0313–1806 is twice as massive as that of the previous record holder and that fact provides astronomers with a valuable clue about such black holes and their affect on their host galaxies.
"This is the earliest evidence of how a supermassive black hole is affecting the galaxy around it," said Feige Wang, a Hubble Fellow at the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory and leader of the research team. "From observations of less distant galaxies, we know that this has to happen, but we have never seen it happening so early in the Universe."
The huge mass of J0313–1806's black hole at such an early time in the Universe's history rules out two theoretical models for how such objects formed, the astronomers said. In the first of these models, individual massive stars explode as supernovae and collapse into black holes that then coalesce into larger black holes. In the second, dense clusters of stars collapse into a massive black hole. In both cases, however, the process takes too long to produce a black hole as massive as the one in J0313-1806 by the age at which we see it.
"This tells you that no matter what you do, the seed of this black hole must have formed by a different mechanism," said Xiaohui Fan, also of the University of Arizona. "In this case, it's a mechanism that involves vast quantities of primordial, cold hydrogen gas directly collapsing into a seed black hole."
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday January 13 2021, @08:49PM
Wake me up when we can see far enough to look at our own asses: I want to see if I wiped mine enough.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---