LBTO: Monster Black Hole Discovered at Cosmic Dawn

[bystander]

Monster Black Hole Discovered at Cosmic Dawn
Large Binocular Telescope | 2015 Feb 25

[i]The newly discovered quasar SDSS J0100+2802 is the one with the most massive black hole and the highest luminosity among all known distant quasars [b](Credits: Zhaoyu Li/Yunnan Observatory. The background photo, provided by Yunnan Observatory, shows the dome of the 2.4meter telescope and the sky over it)[/b][/i]

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Using data from the 2.4 meter Lijiang Telescope (LJT) in Yunnan China, the 6.5-meter Multiple Mirror Telescope (MMT), and the 8.4m Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) in Arizona, USA, the 6.5m Magellan Telescope in Las Campanas Observatory, Chile, and the 8.2m Gemini North Telescope in Mauna Kea, Hawaii, USA, an international team led by Prof. Xue-Bing Wu at Peking University discovered a new quasar, with its central black hole mass of 12 billion solar masses and the luminosity of 420 trillion solar luminosity, at a distance of 12.8 billion light years from the earth. This is the brightest quasar ever discovered in the early universe, powered by the most massive black hole yet known at that time.

The discovery of this quasar, named SDSS J0100+2802, marks an important step in understanding how quasars, the most powerful objects in the universe, have evolved from the earliest epoch, only nine hundred million years after the Big Bang, close to the end of an important cosmic event that astronomers referred to as the “epoch of reionization”: the cosmic dawn when light from the earliest generations of galaxies and quasars were thought to transformed the Universe, ending the “cosmic dark ages”. This discovery is also a surprise: how can a quasar so luminous, and a black hole so massive, form so early in the history of the Universe, at an era soon after the earliest stars and galaxies have just emerged? This research result will be published in the scientific journal “Nature” on Feb 26, 2015.

Discovered in 1963, quasars are the most powerful objects beyond our Milky Way Galaxy. It shines itself as its central supermassive black hole actively accretes surrounding materials. Thanks to the power new generation of digital sky surveys, astronomers have discovered more than 200,000 quasars, ages ranging from 0.7 billion years after the Big Bang to today, with corresponding redshifts up to 7.085. Due to the expansion of the universe, objects are moving away from us. Wavelength of light received by us is larger than that of the originally emitted light. Redshift is defined as the ratio of the wavelength difference to the original wavelength.

High redshift traces structure and evolution of the early universe. However, despite of their high luminosity, they still appear faint due to their large distance away from us, and they are extremely rare on the sky, which make them very difficult to find. Among all the discovered 200,000 quasars, only 40 are 12.7 billion light year away with redshift higher than 6. ...

Monster Black Hole Discovered at Cosmic Dawn
University of Arizona | 2015 Feb 25

Found: Ancient, super-bright quasar with massive black hole
Carnegie Institution for Science | 2015 Feb 25

Astronomers Find Impossibly Large Black Hole
Australian National University | 2015 Feb 25

An ultraluminous quasar with a twelve-billion-solar-mass black hole at redshift 6.30 - Xue-Bing Wu et al

• Nature 518(7540) 512 (26 Feb 2015) DOI: 10.1038/nature14241

[Ann]

I'm going to offer my complete amateur conjecture on the existence of this monster black hole at the dawn of the universe. Back then, the universe contained the same amount of matter and energy as it does now, but the universe was much smaller. That ought to mean that gravity was a far more powerful player in that early cosmos than it is now. So back then gravity could pull much larger amounts of matter together in huge concentrations than it can do today, and that could have led to the runaway creation of monster black holes.

Of course I realize that the real astronomers have objections to my hypothesis, otherwise they would have offered it themselves, and they wouldn't have been so puzzled.

Ann

[BDanielMayfield]

I'm going to offer my complete amateur conjecture on the existence of this monster black hole at the dawn of the universe. Back then, the universe contained the same amount of matter and energy as it does now, but the universe was much smaller. That ought to mean that gravity was a far more powerful player in that early cosmos than it is now. So back then gravity could pull much larger amounts of matter together in huge concentrations than it can do today, and that could have led to the runaway creation of monster black holes.

Ann

Ok, except for the tremendous contribution of dark energy that is accelerating the current expansion of the universe. This means that there is more energy in the universe over time ...