{"id":25326,"date":"2024-10-18T10:30:04","date_gmt":"2024-10-18T04:45:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/?p=25326"},"modified":"2024-10-18T10:30:07","modified_gmt":"2024-10-18T04:45:07","slug":"astronomers-detect-ancient-lonely-quasars-with-murky-origins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/astronomers-detect-ancient-lonely-quasars-with-murky-origins\/","title":{"rendered":"Astronomers detect ancient lonely quasars with murky origins"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Jennifer Chu<\/div>\n\n\n

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — A quasar is the extremely bright core of a galaxy that hosts an active supermassive black hole at its center. As the black hole draws in surrounding gas and dust, it blasts out an enormous amount of energy, making quasars some of the brightest objects in the universe. Quasars have been observed as early as a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, and it\u2019s been a mystery as to how these objects could have grown so bright and massive in such a short amount of cosmic time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scientists have proposed that the earliest quasars sprang from overly dense regions of primordial matter, which would also have produced many smaller galaxies in the quasars\u2019 environment. But in a new MIT-led study, astronomers observed some ancient quasars that appear to be surprisingly alone in the early universe. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The astronomers used NASA\u2019s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to peer back in time, more than 13 billion years, to study the cosmic surroundings of five known ancient quasars. They found a surprising variety in their neighborhoods, or \u201cquasar fields.\u201d While some quasars reside in very crowded fields with more than 50 neighboring galaxies, as all models predict, the remaining quasars appear to drift in voids, with only a few stray galaxies in their vicinity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These lonely quasars are challenging physicists\u2019 understanding of how such luminous objects could have formed so early on in the universe, without a significant source of surrounding matter to fuel their black hole growth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cContrary to previous belief, we find on average, these quasars are not necessarily in those highest-density regions of the early universe. Some of them seem to be sitting in the middle of nowhere,\u201d says Anna-Christina Eilers, assistant professor of physics at MIT. \u201cIt\u2019s difficult to explain how these quasars could have grown so big if they appear to have nothing to feed from.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is a possibility that these quasars may not be as solitary as they appear, but are instead surrounded by galaxies that are heavily shrouded in dust and therefore hidden from view. Eilers and her colleagues hope to tune their observations to try and see through any such cosmic dust, in order to understand how quasars grew so big, so fast, in the early universe. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eilers and her colleagues report their findings in a paper appearing today in the Astrophysical Journal<\/a>. <\/em>The MIT co-authors include postdocs Rohan Naidu and Minghao Yue; Robert Simcoe, the Francis Friedman Professor of Physics and director of MIT\u2019s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research; and collaborators from institutions including Leiden University, the University of California at Santa Barbara, ETH Zurich, and elsewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Galactic neighbors<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The five newly observed quasars are among the oldest quasars observed to date. More than 13 billion years old, the objects are thought to have formed between 600 to 700 million years after the Big Bang. The supermassive black holes powering the quasars are a billion times more massive than the sun, and more than a trillion times brighter. Due to their extreme luminosity, the light from each quasar is able to travel over the age of the universe, far enough to reach JWST\u2019s highly sensitive detectors today. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just phenomenal that we now have a telescope that can capture light from 13 billion years ago in so much detail,\u201d Eilers says. \u201cFor the first time, JWST enabled us to look at the environment of these quasars, where they grew up, and what their neighborhood was like.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The team analyzed images of the five ancient quasars taken by JWST between August 2022 and June 2023. The observations of each quasar comprised multiple \u201cmosaic\u201d images, or partial views of the quasar\u2019s field, which the team effectively stitched together to produce a complete picture of each quasar\u2019s surrounding neighborhood. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The telescope also took measurements of light in multiple wavelengths across each quasar\u2019s field, which the team then processed to determine whether a given object in the field was light from a neighboring galaxy, and how far a galaxy is from the much more luminous central quasar. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe found that the only difference between these five quasars is that their environments look so different,\u201d Eilers says. \u201cFor instance, one quasar has almost 50 galaxies around it, while another has just two. And both quasars are within the same size, volume, brightness, and time of the universe. That was really surprising to see.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Growth spurts<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The disparity in quasar fields introduces a kink in the standard picture of black hole growth and galaxy formation. According to physicists\u2019 best understanding of how the first objects in the universe emerged, a cosmic web of dark matter should have set the course. Dark matter is an as-yet unknown form of matter that has no other interactions with its surroundings other than through gravity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shortly after the Big Bang, the early universe is thought to have formed filaments of dark matter that acted as a sort of gravitational road, attracting gas and dust along its tendrils. In overly dense regions of this web, matter would have accumulated to form more massive objects. And the brightest, most massive early objects, such as quasars, would have formed in the web\u2019s highest-density regions, which would have also churned out many more, smaller galaxies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe cosmic web of dark matter is a solid prediction of our cosmological model of the Universe, and it can be described in detail using numerical simulations,\u201d says co-author says Elia Pizzati, a graduate student at Leiden University. \u201cBy comparing our observations to these simulations, we can determine where in the cosmic web quasars are located.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scientists estimate that quasars would have had to grow continuously with very high accretion rates in order to reach the extreme mass and luminosities at the times that astronomers have observed them, fewer than 1 billion years after the Big Bang. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe main question we\u2019re trying to answer is, how do these billion-solar-mass black holes form at a time when the universe is still really, really young? It\u2019s still in its infancy,\u201d Eilers says. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The team\u2019s findings may raise more questions than answers. The \u201clonely\u201d quasars appear to live in relatively empty regions of space. If physicists\u2019 cosmological models are correct, these barren regions signify very little dark matter, or starting material for brewing up stars and galaxies. How, then, did extremely bright and massive quasars come to be? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur results show that there\u2019s still a significant piece of the puzzle missing of how these supermassive black holes grow,\u201d Eilers says. \u201cIf there\u2019s not enough material around for some quasars to be able to grow continuously, that means there must be some other way that they can grow, that we have yet to figure out.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This research was supported, in part, by the European Research Council.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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