Astronomers have discovered a massive black hole, the biggest yet known at that time. The black hole, 12 billion times more massive than the sun, is the power source of the the brightest quasar in the early universe and formed when the universe was less than 900 million years old.
The quasar, with its central black hole mass of 12 billion solar masses and the luminosity of 420 trillion suns, is at a distance of 12.8 billion light-years from Earth, according to the findings.
The international team led by astronomers from Peking University in China and from the University of Arizona says that the discovery presents a major puzzle to the theory of black hole growth at early universe.
“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? And what is the relationship between this monster black hole and its surrounding environment, including its host galaxy?” said Xiaohui Fan, Regents’ Professor of Astronomy at the UA’s Steward Observatory, who co-authored the study.
“This ultraluminous quasar with its supermassive black hole provides a unique laboratory to the study of the mass assembly and galaxy formation around the most massive black holes in the early universe.”
The quasar dates from a time known as the “epoch of reionization”, which is the cosmic dawn when light from the earliest generations of galaxies and quasars is thought to have ended the “cosmic dark ages” and transformed the universe into how we see it today.
Researchers claim it is the most luminous quasar with the most massive black hole among all the known quasars. This kind of light will allow scientists to to make unprecedented measurements of the temperature, ionization state and metal content of the intergalactic medium at the epoch of reionization.
“By comparison, our own Milky Way galaxy has a black hole with a mass of only 4 million solar masses at its center; the black hole that powers this new quasar is 3,000 time heavier,” Fan said.
The discovery was made using a 2.4-meter Lijiang Telescope in Yunnan, China, making it the only quasar ever discovered by a 2-meter telescope at such distance.