Lately, the astronomers observed a whole bunch of supermassive black holes dating back from the early universe. The cosmologists might have found how the growth of these fascinating space objects happened right after the Big Bang.
How supermassive black holes became so enormous was a puzzle until now. Now, the scientists might have clues on how black holes developed into supermassive black holes. And it all reduces to the disc of dust and gas surrounding supermassive black holes. It moves faster than usual, and it attracts the matter at a faster pace than in the case of ordinary black holes.
That means that supermassive black holes gain mass quicker than other black holes. That could also explain the development of supermassive black holes in the early universe, the scientists believe. The astronomers conducted their study on the unusual black hole at the center of the galaxy known as Messier 77 or NGC 1068.
A New Study Explained The Supermassive Black Holes Development In The Early Universe
The supermassive black hole at the core of Messier 77 presents a massive doughnut-shaped cloud of gas and dust. With the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), in Chile, the astronomers could observe the black hole much better. They found out that the accretion disc surrounding the space object rotates must faster than in other cases and attract more matter.
“Surprisingly, we found two discs of gas rotating in opposite directions. Counter-rotating gas streams are unstable, which means that clouds fall into the black hole faster than they do in a disk with a single rotation direction. This could be a way in which a black hole can grow rapidly,” explained Violette Impellizzeri, an astronomer from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO).
“We did not expect to see this, because gas falling into a black hole would normally spin around it in only one direction. Something must have disturbed the flow because it is impossible for a part of the disc to start rotating backward all on its own,” the astronomer added. Violette Imepllizzeri concluded that the new discovery might explain the supermassive black holes’ development in the early universe.
