Astronomers at NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory have found evidence of a particle beam emerging from a supermassive black hole in the early universe.
The source of the X-ray is a quasar, or a fast-growing supermassive black hole, called PSO J352.4034-15.3373 or PJ352-15.
Located in the center of a young galaxy, the quasar is one of the two most powerful quasars discovered in radio waves in the first billion years after the Big Bang, according to a publication on Tuesday.
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On a scale, PJ352-15 is about a billion times heavier than the sun.
If confirmed, this particle beam would be the most distant supermassive black hole – in a galaxy about 12.7 billion light years from Earth – with a radius detected by X-rays.
For scientists, this jet can help to understand how the largest black holes formed and grew early in the history of the universe.
The scientists scrutinized the PJ352-15 over a three-day period using the Massachusetts-based Chandra telescope to detect evidence for the X-ray, and the X-ray emission was about 160,000 light-years away from the quasar.
The PJ352-15 is a record breaker, being about 300 million light years away from the farthest X-ray previously recorded.
In addition, the longest particle beam previously observed from the first billion years after the Big Bang was only about 5,000 light years long, compared to PJ352-15.
Chandra observed light emitted when the universe was only 0.98 billion years old and the intensity of the background radiation was much greater than it is today.
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The electrons from the jet moving away from the black hole collide with photons that make up the radiation and energize the photons in the X-ray range – increasing the brightness of the X-ray and allowing Chandra to pick it up.
Thomas Connor of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California led the study.
In a series of tweets on Tuesday, Connor said on Tuesday that he and his team stared at the quasar for three full days, and in a blog post on Monday, he highlighted how many of astronomy’s fundamental questions relate to how the universe as we perceive it was put together. .
“The past decade has been an absolute gold rush in the discovery of black holes in the universe’s first billion years, with each new find pushing the boundaries of what we thought possible,” he told Fox News Wednesday. “In particular, we are discovering more massive black holes in the universe earlier than ever, and this is a bit of a challenge – how do you grow to such dimensions in such a short time?”
While jets have been suggested as a way to accelerate black hole growth, the only previously observed jets were relatively small, suggesting they are cosmically young.
“Our results show that these jets can last for a million years, during which time they can act to accelerate the growth of black holes. And the detection of these jets in X-rays – as opposed to radio frequencies – means that there are still some. many more of these elaborate jets, but we just haven’t looked for them yet, ”he explained. “In short, our new results show that X-ray observations may be the key to solving the challenge of the early growth of black holes.”
The process of reaching this conclusion, he said, was laborious.
“The black hole was first marked for observation nearly 10 years ago, before we even knew what it was. In September 2017, we finally measured the redshift, finding it to be in the universe’s first billion years. introduced us to sightings with Chandra in March 2018, the community greatly appreciated our science, and sightings were conducted in August and September 2019, ”Connor recalls.
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“Working on these results was particularly challenging during the pandemic, with team members in six different countries. But that collaboration was crucial as we discussed how to make sure our results were robust and what the overall implications of our findings were,” said he.
An article describing Connor’s results has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal.