Astronomers have discovered the existence of a supermassive black hole that looks like the oldest and most distant of its kind we have ever encountered – and it directs its beam of bright particles directly to Earth.
The researchers say the recently discovered supermassive black hole, dubbed PSO J030947.49 + 271757.31, is the most distant blazar ever observed. This conclusion is based on the object's redshift wavelength signature, which scientists can use to measure the distance between light sources in space.
Blazars are supermassive black holes that underlie active galactic nuclei: the central regions of galaxies burst with high levels of luminosity and electromagnetic radiation, which are generated by intense heat generated by gas and dust particles circulating in the accretion disks of supermassive black holes.
Among space objects, blazars are the brightest of all – at least depending on your location. The term 'blazar' is reserved for supermassive black holes, where the plume of radiation is angled to the Earth, allowing astronomers to analyze these distant black holes in greater detail.
'The spectrum that appeared before our eyes first confirmed that PSO J0309 + 27 is in fact the active nucleus of a galaxy or a galaxy whose central core is very bright due to the presence of a supermassive black hole at its center, fed by gas and stars, a hole absorbs something, 'says astrophysicist Silvia Belladitta of the University of Insubria in Italy.
In addition, the data obtained using the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) also confirmed that PSO J0309 + 27 is really far from us, it was possible to prove this on the dependence of the shift of the color of its light towards the red spectrum with a record value of 6.1.
Based on their readings, astronomers have stated that the light we see from PSO J0309 + 27 was actually emitted nearly 13 billion years ago, meaning the blazar existed in very early stages of the universe, less than a billion years after the Big Bang.
While thousands of blazars have been found to date, PSO J0309 + 27's exceptional distance and age make it stand out – but that doesn't mean the object is completely unique.
Since the blazars emit light directly at us, we have the opportunity to better analyze their rays. Likewise, bright active galactic nuclei – so-called quasars – are tilted at different angles, so their particle beams are likely to remain hidden from us.
“Observing the blazar is extremely important,” Belladitta explains. “For every source of this type found, there should be 100 similar ones, but most of them are oriented differently and therefore too weak to be seen directly.”
The team acknowledges that further observations are needed to find out how large this hypothetical population of black holes might be. In any case, we are looking at an object that is large, important, and new to science; when you study supermassive black holes, no discoveries are trifles.
“Thanks to our discovery, we can say that during the first billion years of the life of the universe, there were a large number of very massive black holes emitting powerful relativistic jets,” says Belladitta.
“This result places severe limits on theoretical models that try to explain the origin of these huge black holes in our universe.”
The results are presented in Astronomy and Astrophysics.
Sources: Photo: NASA / Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab
