Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers have “weighed in” to a sleeping giant – a dormant supermassive black hole located 10 billion light years away. This makes this black hole the most distant supermassive black hole whose mass has ever been measured by scientists.
mahavishal black hole Located at the center of the galaxy MRG-M0138, seen as it was when the universe was about 4 billion years old – and now we know, thanks to James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), that it weighs an incredible 6 Arab times the mass of Sun.
Supermassive black holes can be very conspicuous when actively feeding and are therefore surrounded by abundant matter in a region called an active galactic nucleus (AGN). Due to the immense gravitational forces of the black hole, the AGN shines very brightly. However, because black holes are surrounded by a light-trapping boundary called a event horizonDormant black holes with larder that are not very well stocked are far more elusive. They are practically invisible. Yet, these black holes also have gravitational effects that can have a greater impact than rotating plates of gas and dust – this effect can even affect Earth’s motion. Stars Orbiting a black hole. And those stars are actually visible.
To detect and measure the mass of this supermassive black hole, the team behind this research used JWST to track the motion of the stars at the center of MRG-M0138. This star-tracking trick has been used in the past to weigh dormant black holes very close Earth -For example, the 4.3-million-solar-mass supermassive black hole at the center of our own galaxy, sagittarius a* (SGR A*). However, Sgr A* and its companion star are only 26,000 light-years away, and the most distant black hole that this technique was used to weigh, called stellar dynamics, was located only 700 million light-years away. At a distance nearly 15 times greater than the previous record-holding distance, this new research is the first time it has been successfully employed to measure the mass of a sleeping giant so far away.
“Determining how the stars move collectively at the core of this distant galaxy has allowed us to measure the mass of its otherwise undetectable supermassive black hole,” said team leader and University College of London scientist Richard Ellis. said in a statement. “By demonstrating the feasibility of such a technique for galaxies in the early universe, we can now take a more complete census of how black holes evolve over time and estimate their role in shaping galaxy evolution.”
However, determining the motion of the stars at the center of MRG-M0138 was quite simple. This required a natural cosmic phenomenon known as gravitational lensing, which revealed Albert EinsteinThe great work of is known as the theory of gravitation general relativity.
What is gravitational lensing?
General relativity predicts that objects with mass have a true curvature in structure space timeFour-dimensional integration of three dimensions of space and one dimension of time. Gravity arises from this curvature, and because the greater the mass, the greater the curvature, the greater the mass of an object, the stronger its gravity.
gravitational lensing Occurs when a massive object such as a galaxy or a cluster of galaxies sits between the more distant foreground object and Earth. As light from the background source passes through the curvature of space caused by the massive foreground object or gravitational lensing, its usually straight path becomes curved.
The closer the light passes to the gravitational lens, the more its path is bent, and this means that light from the same object reaches our telescopes at different times. This can magnify the object and, in extreme cases, display the same object multiple times in different locations in the same image.
The gravitational lensing effect of a galaxy between MRG-M0138 and Earth refocused the light from that distant galaxy, magnifying it up to 30 times, allowing Ellis and his colleagues to reconstruct the intricate details of MRG-M0138’s interior.
“By combining JWST data with gravitational lensing, we can see inside the black hole’s impact region, where its gravity accelerates the stars,” said Andrew Newman of Carnegie Science in Pasadena, California. “This is one of the best techniques we have for weighing black holes, so we were excited to extend it to much earlier periods in cosmic history.”
In addition to examining this inactive black hole, the team also determined that MRG-M0138 itself is inactive, meaning it is no longer forming new stars. This is likely the result of the supermassive black hole going through a massive feeding frenzy early in its history, when it would have manifested as a blazing quasar at the center of the AGN. The energy released during this phase would have pushed gas and dust away from both the black hole, ending its nurturing phase, and from MRG-M0138. This will cause the galaxy to lack the raw materials for star formation, which will reduce its stellar birth rate.
This means that with these observations, and more JWST passive supermassive black hole data, scientists can better understand the relationship between galaxy evolution and supermassive black hole growth, as well as the role these cosmic titans play in curtailing star formation in their host galaxies.
The team’s research was published on Thursday (June 4) Science.
