Astronomers have long sought to understand the origins of the universe, but the mystery of what came first has been as difficult to solve as the question of the chicken and the egg. Now, a new breakthrough in cosmology not only sheds light on the early stages of the universe, but also promises to advance our understanding of the formation of new stars and galaxies, challenging the classic view of how black holes emerge after the birth of stars and galaxies.
Traditionally, it has been believed that black holes form at the center of galaxies, swallowing up all celestial bodies within the system. Generally, people have thought that stars and galaxies come first, and a lengthy process of gravitational collapse leads to the formation of supermassive black holes.
However, early universe data collected by the astrophysicist Haochen Sun suggests that black holes and galaxies actually emerged together, with the black holes playing a crucial role in their own evolution as well as the formation of early galaxies. This virtually overturns our previous understanding of how star systems form.
When an especially massive star dies, its core collapses, leaving behind a black hole approximately 50 times the mass of the Sun. But the mass of a supermassive black hole is usually in the hundreds of thousands to billions of times greater than that. If these bodies began their formation from early black holes, it would require a very long period of time and the presence of stars.
As scientists continue to delve deeper into the early universe, they have made startling discoveries. Within just a few billion years after the Big Bang, there were already several supermassive black holes, some of which had masses nearly equivalent to those of the entire galaxy they resided in.
This strong evidence suggests a mechanism for the formation of black holes: a huge influx of matter leads directly to the collapse of a black hole, rather than a sequence of star explosions leading to the creation of a black hole.
Joseph Silk, Professor of Astronomy at the University of Oxford, says that the high-speed outflows from black holes act as particle accelerators, shredding nearby gas clouds to create new star-forming material and speeding up the process of star formation. This can explain why the first galaxies in the universe are so bright and difficult to interpret.
Further observations in the future are expected to aid astronomers in confirming the accuracy of current models and developing more accurate lines of inquiry into the evolution of the universe. These findings were published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
(Original source: University of Oxford)