A group of Massachusetts Institute of Technology astronomers, delving deep into cosmic history, have caught a rare glimpse of the starlight illuminating the space around some of the universe's oldest quasars, according to a report published by the MIT News. These distant quasars, more than 13 billion years old, are providing new insights into the growth of early "monster" black holes and the galaxies that housed them. By isolating the feeble glow of stars from the overpowering brightness of quasars at the hearts of ancient galaxies, the researchers broke new ground in understanding the early universe.
The study, leveraging the James Webb Space Telescope's unmatched resolution, offered a first-time analysis of the less overwhelming light emitted by stars surrounding three archaic quasars. Quasars, with supermassive black holes at their epicenter, famously outshine their stellar neighbors, making the task of spotting the surrounding starlight as complex as catching sight of fireflies next to a blazing beacon. Despite the difficulty, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology team's detailed models sifted out the starlight from the quasar glare, uncovering a surprising mass ratio between the central black holes and their home galaxies.
"After the universe came into existence, there were seed black holes that then consumed material and grew in a very short time," Minghao Yue, a postdoc at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, told MIT News. The team's findings suggest earlier black holes may have evolved from significantly more substantial "seeds" than what is found today, with Yue adding, "One of the big questions is to understand how those monster black holes could grow so big, so fast." This early universe's rogue black holes are billions of times the mass of the sun, at a time when our cosmos was just getting on its feet.
The mass of these ancient black holes relative to their host galaxies was much more significant than today's counterparts, in contrast to the 1:1,000 mass ratio seen in more recent black hole-galaxy systems. Anna-Christina Eilers, assistant professor of physics at MIT and a study author, noted, "Our results imply that in the early universe, supermassive black holes might have gained their mass before their host galaxies did." Eilers further explained to MIT News that these findings offer "tentative evidence that the initial black hole seeds could have been more massive back then." The discovery points to a scenario where black holes took the lead in mass acquisition compared to their surrounding galaxies.
This consequential research was conducted using the sophisticated capabilities of the JWST over a 120-hour period, observing six known ancient quasars from late 2022 through spring. The insights offer a fresh perspective on the origins of massive cosmic entities and provide a foundational understanding of galactic evolution. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology team's work, which has peeled back yet another layer of cosmic mystery, is detailed in their recent publication in the Astrophysical Journal. Alongside Yue and Eilers, collaborators from Switzerland, Austria, Japan, North Carolina State University, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology's very own Kavli Institute participated in this astronomical endeavor, pointing the way to further studies on the secretive early lives of galaxies and their central black holes.
