Researchers say they are responsible for the supermassive black holes at the center of galaxies.
Supermassive black holes
Researchers have found evidence to suggest that the supermassive black holes at the center of galaxies used to be really big stars.
Really very big.
Scientists from the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan and the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics (ASIAA) in Taiwan suspect that large supernovae from supermassive stars may have created these black holes, according to Phys.org The team published a paper of their findings in the journal Monthly Communications from the Royal Astronomical Society
These ancient stars are said to have had masses on the order of millions to billions of times the size of the sun. So yeah, they were pretty damn big.
Extreme Supernova
It’s notoriously difficult to investigate black holes. As such, information about their origins remains elusive to scientists.
However, the research team behind this paper were able to run a “radiation hydrodynamic simulation” to gather their evidence, their study said.
As part of their study, the team predicts that the James Webb Space Telescope will be able to observe an extreme supernova when it launches later this year. When that happens, it will add very strong evidence that these supermassive stars are the origin of supermassive black holes.
Black Hole seeds
This study builds on previous research conducted by Ke-Jung Chen, assistant research fellow at ASIAA Taiwan and co-author of the paper. He says these supermassive stars likely act as “seeds of the black hole.”
“There may be a small number of the first stars in the early Universe with tens of thousands of solar masses,” Chen said in a press release. “They are probably the precursors of supermassive black holes in the galaxies. Because the more massive the black hole’s seed is, the more efficient it is to swallow the surrounding matter. “
Ah, wicked huge black holes that can forget everything we know and love. What a comforting thought! Fortunately, we will probably never encounter one, even if our sun reaches the end of its life and shrinks into a white dwarf.
Between this and the swarm of black holes However, scientists discovered earlier this year that keeping us awake at night is just another thing.
Editor’s Note 3/15/2021: This story originally misrepresented what to expect from our sun’s end of life. It has been updated.
READ MORE: Massive stars in the early Universe may have been precursors to supermassive black holes [Phys.org]
More about black holes: Black holes can devour stars from within, like cancer
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