⚫ Black holes: the enigma of supermassive babies solved?
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Research conducted at Maynooth University in Ireland, published in Nature Astronomy, sheds new light. The team suggests that the early Universe was a much more turbulent place than previously estimated, creating conditions conducive to the extremely rapid growth of black holes.
Computer-generated image showing the emergence of cosmic structure in the very young Universe.
Credit: Dr John Regan
To reach this conclusion, scientists used detailed computer simulations to track the evolution of matter around the first black holes. These models show that these objects, which appeared a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, could have seen their mass increase dramatically, reaching tens of thousands of times that of the Sun in a relatively short period of time.
In the current Universe, the intense radiation produced by the immediate environment of a black hole in its accretion phase tends to push away surrounding material, thus limiting its fuel supply. However, in the young Universe, the ambient density and turbulence were such that this feedback effect was much less effective, allowing black holes to continue feeding actively.
This result transforms the view of the 'seeds' at the origin of black holes. It was previously thought that only black holes formed with a very high initial mass could reach supermassive status quickly. The new simulations indicate, for their part, that even more modest-sized black holes, resulting from the collapse of stars, could have experienced exceptional expansion in this particular environment.
This work has implications for future space missions. LISA, a joint ESA and NASA project scheduled for launch in 2035, could thus be capable of detecting the gravitational waves emitted during the mergers of these young black holes. This capability would then offer direct observation of events occurring in the earliest cosmic ages.