Six galaxies trapped in the web of an ancient supermassive black hole

[sl8]

https://astronomy.com/news/2020/10/six-ancient-galaxies-found-in-the-web-of-a-supermassive-black-hole

Six galaxies trapped in the web of an ancient supermassive black hole

Astronomers have discovered a half-dozen galaxies, which formed within the first billion years of the universe, blockading a supermassive black hole.

By Caitlyn Buongiorno | Published: Friday, October 2, 2020

Astronomers have long struggled to understand how supermassive black holes could have formed in the early universe. They know these cosmic goliaths would have needed to grow extremely fast to achieve their supermassive status so quickly (within about 1 billion years of the Big Bang). But exactly where they found huge amounts of matter to gorge on remains unclear.

Now, new findings from the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), published October 1 in Astronomy & Astrophysics, may provide the answer.

The six newly discovered old-school galaxies reside within a vast web of gas — which spans some 300 times the diameter of the Milky Way — and were observed thanks to extended observations by VLT. After analyzing the data, the researchers determined they were seeing these galaxies as they existed just 900 million years after the Big Bang, when the universe was little more than 6 percent its current age. This is the first time such a close grouping of galaxies has been found within the first billion years of the universe.

Plus, at the center of galactic mosh pit sits a supermassive black hole some 1 billion times the mass of the Sun. “[Supermassive black holes in the early universe] are extreme systems, and, to date, we have had no good explanation for their existence,” said lead author Marco Mignoli in an ESO press release.

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[Bluepinky]

1. This sounds fascinating but so complicated.

It’s hard to wrap my head around the size and scope of all this. How do they even study it?

[cstanleytech]

2. I have never really been surprised about such blackholes existing so quickly because

it just stands to reason that when the universe was created that there would be larger clumps of matter which in this case are the larger blackholes.