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Researchers have recorded the anomalous growth of the ID830 quasar 12 billion years after the Big Bang.
In the early universe, there was a quasar that behaved too brazenly, even by the standards of black holes. The object called ID830 is not only growing faster than the permissible "speed limit" for supermassive black holes, but also simultaneously shines with powerful X-ray bursts and launches giant radio jets. Theory usually doesn't expect such a couple in one place.
ID830 belongs to quasars, the brightest and most active galactic nuclei. The supermassive black hole in the center pulls gas and dust towards it, spins up matter in the accretion disk and ejects jets of radiation from the poles. X-rays are born in the same place where matter is almost falling into the "mouth" of a black hole and accelerating to near-light speeds.
The main shock is in weight and age. Already about 12 billion years ago, when the universe lived for about 15% of its current age, ID830 had a mass of about 440 million Suns. For scale, it is enough to compare with Sagittarius A* in the center of the Milky Way, which is more than a hundred times lighter.
Astronomers have long considered the growth of black holes to be self-regulating. The gas settles in the disk, gravity pulls the matter in, but the radiation from the heated matter presses out and begins to interfere with further influx. This is how the Eddington limit appears, a conditional "stopcock" that prevents infinitely accelerating the power supply.
The new result shows how the ID830 gets past the stopcock. The team of authors estimated the growth rate by brightness in ultraviolet and X-ray and obtained approximately a 13-fold excess of the Eddington limit. Researchers attribute the burst to a sudden influx of gas, for example, after a black hole tore apart and swallowed an object that came too close. For such a massive black hole, an "ordinary" star may not be enough, a giant star or a huge gas cluster are more suitable. At the same time, the phase of superfast nutrition, according to co-author Sakriko Obuchi from Waseda University, should be very short, about 300 years. Almost a flash by cosmic standards.
The second mystery is no less interesting. The ID830 simultaneously shows strong radio jets and bright X-rays, although super-Eddington accretion, according to popular models, should rather suppress such manifestations. The authors consider the combination to be a hint of physics, which the current scenarios of jet launch and extreme nutrition describe incompletely.
The X-ray radiation is interpreted to come from the corona, a rarefied and very hot cloud of particles above the accretion disk. The magnetic fields of the disk accelerate particles to extreme energies, and the temperature of the corona can reach billions of degrees. NASA calls such areas one of the most extreme environments in the universe.
The story of the ID830 fits into the general plot of recent years. Observations, including with the James Webb Space Telescope, increasingly show supermassive black holes that are too early and too heavy. The classic picture of "seeds" from the first stars of Population III helps, but even heavy embryos have to feed for a long time at the Eddington limit, and such a marathon requires huge gas reserves and stable conditions.
The ID830 offers a more "nervous" growth pattern. Short, super-powerful bursts of power can dramatically build up mass and simultaneously activate feedback mechanisms. The energy flows from X-rays and jets heat and disperse the gas between the stars, slow down the formation of new stars and actually make the galaxy pay for the rapid growth of the core by its own development. The authors add another intrigue. According to the analysis of ultraviolet brightness, quasars like ID830 may occur more often than expected, and the proportion of objects with strong radio bursts in the early Universe could be higher than the accepted estimate.
In the early universe, there was a quasar that behaved too brazenly, even by the standards of black holes. The object called ID830 is not only growing faster than the permissible "speed limit" for supermassive black holes, but also simultaneously shines with powerful X-ray bursts and launches giant radio jets. Theory usually doesn't expect such a couple in one place.
ID830 belongs to quasars, the brightest and most active galactic nuclei. The supermassive black hole in the center pulls gas and dust towards it, spins up matter in the accretion disk and ejects jets of radiation from the poles. X-rays are born in the same place where matter is almost falling into the "mouth" of a black hole and accelerating to near-light speeds.
The main shock is in weight and age. Already about 12 billion years ago, when the universe lived for about 15% of its current age, ID830 had a mass of about 440 million Suns. For scale, it is enough to compare with Sagittarius A* in the center of the Milky Way, which is more than a hundred times lighter.
Astronomers have long considered the growth of black holes to be self-regulating. The gas settles in the disk, gravity pulls the matter in, but the radiation from the heated matter presses out and begins to interfere with further influx. This is how the Eddington limit appears, a conditional "stopcock" that prevents infinitely accelerating the power supply.
The new result shows how the ID830 gets past the stopcock. The team of authors estimated the growth rate by brightness in ultraviolet and X-ray and obtained approximately a 13-fold excess of the Eddington limit. Researchers attribute the burst to a sudden influx of gas, for example, after a black hole tore apart and swallowed an object that came too close. For such a massive black hole, an "ordinary" star may not be enough, a giant star or a huge gas cluster are more suitable. At the same time, the phase of superfast nutrition, according to co-author Sakriko Obuchi from Waseda University, should be very short, about 300 years. Almost a flash by cosmic standards.
The second mystery is no less interesting. The ID830 simultaneously shows strong radio jets and bright X-rays, although super-Eddington accretion, according to popular models, should rather suppress such manifestations. The authors consider the combination to be a hint of physics, which the current scenarios of jet launch and extreme nutrition describe incompletely.
The X-ray radiation is interpreted to come from the corona, a rarefied and very hot cloud of particles above the accretion disk. The magnetic fields of the disk accelerate particles to extreme energies, and the temperature of the corona can reach billions of degrees. NASA calls such areas one of the most extreme environments in the universe.
The story of the ID830 fits into the general plot of recent years. Observations, including with the James Webb Space Telescope, increasingly show supermassive black holes that are too early and too heavy. The classic picture of "seeds" from the first stars of Population III helps, but even heavy embryos have to feed for a long time at the Eddington limit, and such a marathon requires huge gas reserves and stable conditions.
The ID830 offers a more "nervous" growth pattern. Short, super-powerful bursts of power can dramatically build up mass and simultaneously activate feedback mechanisms. The energy flows from X-rays and jets heat and disperse the gas between the stars, slow down the formation of new stars and actually make the galaxy pay for the rapid growth of the core by its own development. The authors add another intrigue. According to the analysis of ultraviolet brightness, quasars like ID830 may occur more often than expected, and the proportion of objects with strong radio bursts in the early Universe could be higher than the accepted estimate.
