Supermassive Black Holes Discovered Billions of Light Years Away -A Galaxy Insight

"Active, supermassive black holes were everywhere in the early universe, we had seen the tip of the iceberg before in our search for these objects. Now, we can see the iceberg itself."

Mark Dickinson of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Tucson, Ariz.

Astronomers have long assumed there were far more so-called "active" black holes than had been observed, but were unable to find any trace of them.

An international team of astronomers unexpectedly found hundreds of expanding "supermassive" black holes buried deep inside galaxies billions of light years from earth. The findings more than double the total number of black holes known to exist at that distance, and suggest there were hundreds of millions more growing in the early universe.

These super-massive entities are known as high-energy quasars, a form of black hole, found in a young galaxies, that is surrounded by a thick halo of gas and dust which shoot off X-rays as they are sucked into the void.

The X-rays, which can be detected as a general glow in space even when the quasars themselves cannot be seen, are what tipped off the scientists that they had stumbled across something extraordinary.

The astounding discovery is the first direct evidence that most - perhaps all - huge galaxies in the far reaches of the universe generated cavernous black holes during their youth, when about 3.5 billion years old.

"We had seen the tip of the iceberg before in our search for these objects. Now, we can see the iceberg itself," said Mark Dickinson of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Tucson, Arizona.

"We knew from other studies from about 30 years ago that there must be more quasars in the universe, but we didn't know where to find them until now," said French astrophysicist Emanuel Daddi, who led the research. Daddi and his team set out to study about 1,000 galaxies - about the same mass as the Milky Way - in the process of making stars, but thought to lack quasars.

At nine to 10 billion light years distant, what scientists see today existed about 10 billion years ago, when the universe was still a fledgling between 2.5 and 4.5 billion years old. The quasars will help answer fundamental questions about how massive galaxies evolve. Astronomers now know, for example, that most of these galaxies steadily generate stars and black holes simultaneously until the latter become too big and impede star formation.

Two telescopes were needed to see the black holes. One is NASA's Spitzer space telescope, which picks up infrared light, and the other is the Chandra telescope, which relays X-ray data.

The findings will be published next month in the US journal Astrophysical Journal.

Posted by Casey Kazan. Adapted from a Science Daily research release.

Related Galaxy posts:

Neutron Stars: New Discovery Proves Einstein's Space-Time Predictions
Mystery Neutron Star Discovered
Andromeda Galaxy & Its Mystery Core: Destined to Merge With the Milky Way?
Neutron Stars & The Physics of Star Trek
New, Revised Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Black Holes Key to Mapping the Evolution of the Universe
NASA Finds Bizarre Planet-Mass Orbiting Neutron Star in the Constellation Sagittarius

Source Links:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071025150029.htm
http://www.smh.com.au/news/science/astronomers-discover-supermassive-black-holes/2007/10/27/1192941379147.html
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=31&art_id=nw20071026171027750C149197
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/10/mystery-of-the-.html

Comments

[Adrian Eden]

Space, the final frontier. So true.

There is also a Blackhole in the center of the milky way.

[ompancho]

by the time we get there with our space ship, it's all burnt out :-(

[your mom]

Cool story, but you desperately need to get an editor. Your grammar is horrendously awful.

[Barrie O'Leary]

When these objects were detected back in the early sixties by radio astronomy, they were given a name but their true nature was dumbfounding. It is really incredible that so much can now be understood about things so far away.

But can we detect if what we can view back at the beginning of time is not also relocatabe in 'nearby' galaxies?

[Rob]

Well that's an interesting discovery...
Being so massive and perhaps prevalent in the distant universe..and like being propelled still by big bang? Could their gravitational influence still be pervasive and tugging on the matter of masses near the center of the big bang [per-say] ?
The evidence that the universe is still expanding... ...could these super massive black holes still be dragging 'inner' objects and masses with them in their trails?

[claudio]

Have NEUTRON STARS anything to do with Quasars and their inferred remnants that are the supermassive black holes ??

I would say NO.

So Casey why so many references to articles talking about neutron stars ??

I agree with researchers that generally the Quasars are massive explosions ...presumably of the inferred GIGASTARS part of an early universe....

Again these (Quasars) appear to conflict with the model of the single melting pot and singularity and subsequent explosion to form our universe (a single one universe)....expanding at the Hubble speed.

Many large explosions might have taken place in the very joung universe and then again we could theorize a multiverse ...with or without the Quantum theory of Hawkings and his british colleague....and related string theory...

A multiverse or more simply a brane universe may be the one which we are part of....in that brane universe (a kind of multiverse) the speed of light would be 'strange' as the light could jump from one brane to another....and if so.....what about the famous destiny of our universe (inflating forever)...so much predicated by some and published on some SAT-TV transmissions ??.....This model is fully based on the RED -SHIFT of old supernovae.

I guess I alredy expressed the concept that We the Human bipeds of the planet Earth do KNOW NOT much YET of these large and difficult matters where the physics tend to slides down within 'theories' , 'Philosophy'and some 'abstract math' more than measurable facts.

We have to learn a lot and I am very glad that few or NONE has yet understood what the quasars are...and how these have contributed to the creation of the galaxies...that we corrently see...with supermassive black holes or clusters of massive black holes like in Andromeda...exactly in their baricenter.

Otherwise we would have discovered everything (which is NOT) and what we would had left for the future generation and scientists to discover ??? Nothing ?????

Sometime ...I do not know if it is a result of Internet age....we appear to understand and explain anything about everything...that it is clearly exagerated and also WRONG.

Regards

[Dane]

Cool story, but you desperately need to get an editor. Your grammar is horrendously awful..

[sandeep]

It will suck our planet along with milky way and throw it to the unknown place and or there would be the end of our planet within it. And our milky way will be dithered in diffrent directions.

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