Researchers measure the environment where the first supermassive black holes formed
When the James Webb Space Telescope pointed its powerful instruments toward the early universe, scientists were surprised by what it found. At high-redshift (z) values, corresponding to less than 1 billion years after the Big Bang, astronomers witnessed an abundance of galaxies that hosted what appeared to be the "seeds" of supermassive black holes (SMBHs).
The James Webb Space Telescope's observations of the early universe revealed an abundance of galaxies hosting what appeared to be the seeds of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) just 1 billion years after the Big Bang. This finding contradicted existing models of black hole formation, which suggested that stars collapse at the end of their lives to form black holes that then merge to create SMBHs.
Researchers from various institutions, including the University of Edinburgh and multiple observatories, investigated alternative pathways for black hole formation. They focused on environments rich in dark matter mergers and cosmic overdensities, where dense regions of gas, dust, and stars could facilitate the formation of SMBH seeds through direct collapse.
Using high-resolution simulations and semi-analytic models, the team modeled the formation and detectability of these early black hole seeds. Their results suggest that massive black hole seeds could have formed as early as 13.64 billion years ago, just 500 million years after the Big Bang. However, metal enrichment from early supernovae would have inhibited further episodes of direct collapse by around 13.5 billion to 13.4 billion years ago.
The findings provide a theoretical framework for testing the conditions that favor heavy seed formation and assessing the role of direct collapse in the early SMBH population. The team concludes that future JWST surveys could identify a large population of quasar-companion AGN candidates, supporting the hypothesis that early black hole formation preferentially occurs in highly clustered, overdense environments.
Written by urgent.news from Phys.org's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
