An international team of astronomers has announced the discovery of a record-breaking quasar. The bright quasar J0313-1806 is about 13.03 billion light-years distant from Earth and its luminosity is 1,000 times brighter than our entire galaxy. In addition, it was formed only 670 million years after the Big Bang, 20 million years before the last data established so far. Until now, the quasar ULAS J1342 + 0928, identified three years ago, held the first place. Now this new quasar, from when the universe was only 5% its current age, continues to challenge our understanding of how galaxies and their supermassive black holes form, it has become the oldest and most distant in the universe.
It houses a huge black hole
The quasar J0313-1806 is powered by a gigantic supermassive black hole 1.6 billion times more massive than our Sun. Located more than 13 billion light-years from Earth, it is also the most distant supermassive black hole known to science.
“This is the earliest evidence of how a supermassive black hole is affecting the galaxy around it,” said Feige Wang of the University of Arizona Steward Observatory and co-author of the paper published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. “From observations of less distant galaxies, we know this has to happen, but we have never seen it take place so early in the life of the universe.”
How is a quasar born?
Quasars – one of the most distant and luminous objects known – occur when the powerful gravity of a supermassive black hole in the nucleus of a galaxy pulls in surrounding material that forms an orbital disk of superheated material around the black hole, releasing huge amounts of energy . This peculiar quasar grew relatively fast after the Big Bang.
This one in particular, in addition to being the most distant – and therefore the oldest – known quasar, is the first of its kind to show evidence of a jet of superheated gas (ultra-hot gas and plasma) emerging from the surroundings of the hole. black at one fifth the speed of light. In addition to revealing a strong quasar-driven wind, the new observations also show intense star-forming activity in the host galaxy (200 times faster than our Milky Way). It is certainly a fascinating object. At such high rates of star formation, it is a matter of time before all the material is exhausted to produce new stars.
“We believe that these supermassive black holes were the reason why many of the large galaxies stopped forming stars at some point,” says Xiaohui Fan of the Arizona Department of Astronomy and co-author of the work. And there will be nothing left to devour for the colossal black hole it contains and its bright glow will dim, at least from our point of view, as this supermassive black hole ‘eats’ 25 suns per year and the expulsion of gas out of the galaxy at 20% the speed of light doesn’t help either. At some point, the galaxy will not have enough gas to form new stars and its activity will stop.
The researchers hope to uncover more data on the secrets of the quasar with future observations, especially with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope , currently scheduled for launch in 2021.
Referencia: “The Most Distant Quasar in the Universe,” Feige Wang, [238], Jan. 12, 4:10-4:20 p.m. EST. aas.org/meetings/aas237
A Luminous Quasar at Redshift 7.642, arXiv:2101.03179 [astro-ph.GA] arxiv.org/abs/2101.03179
