A very giant web of a giant supermassive black hole that has been feeding on the gas of six
galaxies has been observed by astronomers using ESO’s Very large telescope. We believe
these galaxies to have been trapped in the spider like web of this giant super-massive
black hole. The finding helps to better understand how supermassive black holes, one of which
exists at the centre of our Milky Way, formed and grew to their enormous sizes so quickly.
It also supports the theory that black holes can grow rapidly within large, web-like structures
which contain plenty of gas to fuel them, according to the astronomers.So how is it
possible? IS it because of Dark matter! Or any other phenomenon!! Let’s find out.
So just sit back and relax and get ready to know more about this strange discovery in
this video.
Black holes are some of the strangest and most fascinating objects in outer space. They’re
extremely dense, with such strong gravitational attraction that even light cannot escape their
grasp if it comes near enough. Albert Einstein first predicted the existence of black holes
in 1916, with his general theory of relativity. The term “black hole” was coined many
years later in 1967 by American astronomer John Wheeler. After decades of black holes
being known only as theoretical objects, the first physical black hole ever discovered
was spotted in 1971. Since then, black holes have been a centre of attraction and research
for many astronomers. A black hole is formed when the centre of a very massive star collapses
in upon itself. This collapse also causes a supernova, or an exploding star, that blasts
part of the star into space. Have you ever wondered if light can’t escape a black hole,
how can we see black holes? Well, we don’t see a black hole, we observe the presence
of a black hole by its effect on its surrounding. They are very hard to detect in our own galaxy.
Then, In 2019 the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration released the first image
ever recorded of a black hole. The EHT saw the black hole in the centre of galaxy M87
while the telescope was examining the event horizon, or the area past which nothing can
escape from a black hole. The image maps the sudden loss of photons (particles of light).
It also opens up a whole new area of research in black holes, now that astronomers know
what a black hole looks like. Black holes are strange and hard to study. There are a
good deal of strange once that exist in our universe and have been observed by the scientists.
We already have made a video on these strangest black holes of the universe and also about
the first photograph of a black hole. We will leave their link in the description below.
Supermassive black holes are one of the most challenging astronomical objects in the universe.
Not much is known about them except that they are very huge and are present at the centre
of every galaxy. Supermassive black holes are extreme systems, and, to date, we have
had no good explanation for their existence. Scientist know little about them. Their formation
and especially their formation in the early universe is a very intriguing question that
scientists look to answer. “Our work has placed an important piece in the largely incomplete
puzzle that is the formation and growth of such extreme, yet relatively abundant, objects
so quickly after the Big Bang,” said Roberto Gilli, and astronomer at INAF in Bologna.
It is thought the first black holes, believed to have formed from the collapse of the first
stars, must have grown very fast to reach a billion solar masses within the first 900
million years of the Universe’s life. On the top of that, recently Astronomers have
discovered a half-dozen galaxies, which formed within the first billion years of the universe,
blockading a supermassive black hole. The first billion years of the universe were chaotic.
We can look back in time and in a cosmic sense, Earth is positioned to do so. Because of how
long it takes light to travel across the universe, our telescopes can pick up the faint signals
of what life was like in the universe’s very early days. In the first week of October
astronomers announced the discovery of a massive, intriguing structure from when the universe
was just 900 million years old. The structure, about 300 times the size of the Milky Way,
contains a supermassive black hole that has ensnared six nearby galaxies in a cosmic “spider’s
web” of gas. It’s shedding new light on how these monstrous beasts of the early universe
can grow so rapidly. Astronomers have struggled to understand how supermassive black holes
could have formed in the early universe. They know these cosmic goliaths would have needed
to grow extremely fast to achieve their supermassive status so quickly (within about 1 billion
years of the Big Bang). But they still don’t know where they found out enormous amounts
of matter to feed and grow so quickly. But now the new findings from the European Southern
Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), may help us find this answer.
The six newly discovered galaxies aside within a vast web network of gas - which spans some
300 times the diameter of the Milky Way — and were observed thanks to extended observations
by Very Large Telescope (VLT). After analyzing the data, the researchers determined they
were seeing these galaxies as they existed just 900 million years after the Big Bang,
when the universe was little more than 6 percent of its current age. This is the first time
such a close grouping of galaxies has been found within the first billion years of the
universe. And that just continues to put more intriguing and challenging questions for astronomers.
And not only this a supermassive black hole some one billion times the mass of the sun
sits at the centre of the galactic pit. The original research paper that was published
by the scientists states: “We report on the spectroscopic confirmation of a large-scale
structure around the luminous z=6.31 quasi-stellar object (QSO) SDSS J1030+0524( the
name given given to this structure), powered by a one billion solar mass black hole. The
structure is populated by at least six members”. These six members are the galaxies caught
up in the giant web of the supermassive Blackhole. The most challenging problem is of the very
existence of these supermassive black holes in the early universe. Scientists know that
there is a limit to how fast a black hole can grow, the Eddington limit. But while this
factor plays a part, scientist cannot understand how these black holes sourced their meals
in the first place. In the early universe there was not much present for these black
holes to feed upon grow as fast as they did. So how is it possible that they exist? Astronomers
have struggled to explain how sufficiently large amounts of “black hole fuel” could
have been available to enable these objects to grow to such enormous sizes in such a short
time. Scientist believe that it has likely to do with the universe’s vast cosmic web.
Scientist think, The universe isn’t a random jumble of objects; it has a structure composed
of galaxies and gas. Cosmologists call this structure the cosmic web. The cosmic web is
composed of interconnecting filaments of clustered galaxies and gases stretched out across the
universe and separated by giant voids. Recently scientist were able to observe this mysterious
cosmic web directly for the first time. The observations reveal that an ancient cluster
of galaxies about 12 billion light years away in the constellation of Aquarius are linked
together by a network of faint gas filaments. The physics of the universe is fascinating,
and you might have observed that till now. The newfound structure offers a likely explanation
– the web-like structure and the galaxies within it contain enough gas to provide the
fuel that the central black hole needs to quickly become a supermassive giant.
Using the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO’s) Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile
and telescopes in the US, astronomers examined J1030, which resides in a deep, dark corner
of space. The supermassive black hole, which has one billion times more mass than our sun,
is huge -- and that’s unusual because it’s also very young. The authors behind the new
study think that their supermassive black hole and its surrounding galaxies, dubbed
SDSS J1030+0524, likely fed on the gas that was stockpiled in a tangled knot of cosmic
web filaments. “This research was mainly driven by the desire to understand some of
the most challenging astronomical objects — supermassive black holes in the early
Universe,” said Marco Mignoli, an astronomer at the National Institute for Astrophysics
(INAF) in Bologna, Italy, in a press release. Several huge black holes have been found in
the earliest eras of the universe, but astronomers haven’t quite been able to pin down what
was enabling them to grow to such mammoth sizes. “The cosmic web filaments are like
spider’s web threads,” said Mignoli. “The galaxies stand and grow where the filaments
cross, and streams of gas — available to fuel both the galaxies and the central supermassive
black hole — can flow along the filaments.” But that just pushes the question farther
back. How did these filaments first get their gas? Astronomers think the answer might be
related to another long-standing astronomical mystery: dark matter! The gigantic structure,
the team reason, might help feed the black hole with the space food it needs to grow
to such large sizes. The finding, the team suggest, provides evidence that “dark matter
halos,” invisible spheres of dark matter, are key to formation of black holes and galaxies
in the early universe. It’s these halos which provide a type of skeleton where matter,
like gas, collects. The gas flows through this invisible skeleton and eventually falls
into the black hole where it gets gobbled up. More gas and galaxies falling into the
black hole means a bigger black hole. Scientists think In the very early universe, normal matter
was too hot to actually stick together and form gravitationally bound objects such as
black holes and galaxies. But researchers think dark matter may have been a lot colder
than normal matter. This means dark matter could have clumped together in the early universe,
forming giant structures known as dark matter halos. The gravity from these dark structures
would have went on to reel in normal matter, attracting enormous amounts of gas that would
allow the first galaxies and black holes to take root. There might be other structures
like this in other corners of the universe which might have formed and grown within the
most massive dark matter halos.
Potentially, many more galaxies reside in the gigantic structure around J1030. “We
believe we have just seen the tip of the iceberg, and that the few galaxies discovered so far
around this supermassive black hole are only the brightest ones,” said Barbara Balmaverde,
an astronomer at INAF and co-author of the study. It’s hoped the ESO’s next-generation
telescope, the Extremely Large Telescope, can observe light from faint objects in J1030’s
vicinity. It’s expected to come online in 2025.
As already said above the physics of the universe can be fascinating and mind-boggling. There
are still a lot of things that we do not know about in our cosmos. New discoveries are always
being made which refine our perception and understanding of the universe. SO what do
you think about this intriguing new discovery? Is dark matter the key for us to understand
the universe better? What other secrets might this universe be hiding? Let us know your
questions and views in the comment section below. And don’t forget to like the video
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