Astronomers Found a Black Hole That Broke Science

Bright Side

Astronomers recently found a black hole that’s blowing everyone’s minds. This black hole is so massive and strange, it’s challenging what we thought we knew about space. It’s much bigger than what current theories say black holes of its kind should be. Scientists are now scratching their heads, trying to figure out how it got so huge. This discovery could change our understanding of the universe in a big way.

Transcript

00:00The James Webb Space Telescope is an absolutely stunning piece of equipment,

00:05which is around 100 times more powerful than the Hubble Space Telescope,

00:09and the latter has managed to observe places that are around 13 billion light-years away.

00:14But recently, James Webb has outdone itself.

00:17It spotted something it wasn't supposed to see.

00:20Astronomers using the telescope have detected a supermassive black hole

00:24from when our universe was less than 600 million years old.

00:27Just a baby.

00:29This discovery is the most distant, actively feeding supermassive black ever observed.

00:34It's located at the heart of its host galaxy, designated Sears 1019.

00:39The black hole is also one of the smallest and least massive ones found in the early universe.

00:44It's equal to approximately 9 million suns.

00:47It might seem like a lot, but in reality,

00:50supermassive black holes often grow to billions of times the mass of our star.

00:55But what is so unusual about this find?

00:57And why are scientists having a hard time trying to explain it?

01:01You see, it's supposed to take way longer than 600 million years for a supermassive black hole to grow to its full potential.

01:09It happens when a black hole either feasts on surrounding matter or merges with a larger black hole.

01:14Even black holes similar to the one at the center of our Milky Way galaxy,

01:19which is almost 4.5 million times the mass of our sun,

01:22are supposed to be seen in the more recent universe.

01:25Well, to tell you the truth, scientists have long suspected that supermassive black holes

01:31could have existed in the early universe.

01:33But this theory has been proven only thanks to the JWST and its infrared eye.

01:39It has shown that the black hole Sears 1019 is actively munching on all the matter it can lay its hands on.

01:45Such feeding black holes are usually surrounded by swirls of gas and dust falling inside them.

01:51Such swirls are also called accretion disks.

01:54The gravitational force of a black hole heats this matter,

01:57which makes the disk shine bright like a diamond.

02:00Uh-hum.

02:01Sorry, but that's not all.

02:02Strong magnetic fields produced in the process channel the matter to the poles of the black hole,

02:07and from time to time this matter is blasted out of there in twin powerful jets.

02:11Yes, they move at a speed that is close to the speed of light, which generates incredibly bright light.

02:17By the way, astronomers were watching the galaxy hosting the unusually old black hole

02:22as part of the cosmic evolution early release since survey.

02:26They saw the galaxy as it was when the universe, which is around 13.8 billion years old now,

02:32was a mere 570 million years old.

02:35Besides the main character of this video, scientists spotted two other black holes,

02:40those probably appeared 1 in 1.1 billion years after the Big Bang,

02:45and 11 ancient galaxies that existed between 470 and 675 million years after the beginning of cosmic history.

02:53The coolest thing about all these discoveries is that until recently,

02:58all research about things that existed in the early universe was mostly theoretical.

03:02But now, with the help of the James Webb Telescope,

03:05astronomers can not only see galaxies and black holes at unimaginable distances,

03:10but they can also measure them.

03:12This isn't the only discovery connected with black holes made recently.

03:16For example, not so long ago, scientists saw two stars slow down in their orbits around black holes,

03:22and concluded it was most likely the result of drag produced by dark matter.

03:26It was the first time astronomers might have discovered some indirect evidence

03:30that huge amounts of dark matter could surround black holes.

03:34Now, about that dark matter.

03:37What is it?

03:37And what does it consist of?

03:39Our universe consists of normal matter, dark matter, and dark energy.

03:43Normal matter, which is everything you can see with your own eyes,

03:47or with the help of instruments,

03:48makes up around 5% of the universe.

03:52Hmm.

03:52Since it's such a small fraction of the universe,

03:55maybe we shouldn't call it normal?

03:58Dark energy takes up around 68%.

04:00And about 27% of the universe is dark matter.

04:05This dark matter is just one more space thing that confuses scientists to no end.

04:10If dark energy is a force responsible for the expansion of the universe,

04:14dark matter is supposed to explain how objects work together.

04:18Potential candidates for dark matter vary from strange particles to super dim objects.

04:22But even though astronomers can't grasp what exactly dark matter is,

04:27they know for sure what it isn't.

04:29This matter is dark, so we can rule out visible stars and planets.

04:33It also can't be dark clouds of normal matter.

04:36Otherwise, scientists would be able to detect it.

04:39Dark matter is not antimatter,

04:41since astronomers don't see unique gamma rays that appear when antimatter comes in contact with matter.

04:46And neither is dark matter gigantic galaxy-sized black holes.

04:50In other words, dark matter is still as much of a mystery to us as dark energy.

04:56Anyway, back to the potential dark matter discovered around the black holes.

05:00If it is confirmed, it'll be a great breakthrough in dark matter research.

05:04What helped scientists come up with this idea

05:07is that dark matter interacts gravitationally, influencing ordinary matter.

05:12So, a team of researchers watched the orbits of two stars decay by about one millisecond per year,

05:19while they were circling their companion black holes.

05:22The scientists concluded that these changes in speed

05:25were the result of dark matter generating friction and a drag on the stars.

05:30With the help of computer simulations of the black hole systems,

05:35the team tested a model widely known in cosmology.

05:38It's called the Dark Matter Dynamic Friction Model,

05:42and it predicts a certain loss of momentum by objects

05:45that are gravitationally interacting with dark matter.

05:48And guess what?

05:49The simulation matched these predictions.

05:50The results of this research helped to confirm a theory that had existed for a long time,

05:57that black holes can actually swallow dark matter that comes too close.

06:01As a result, dark matter gets redistributed around black holes,

06:05creating areas with different densities,

06:07which can influence the orbits of surrounding objects,

06:10like the stars we've been talking about.

06:13Speaking of black holes,

06:14there's a theory that primordial black holes could actually be dark matter.

06:18This type of black hole is hypothetical

06:20since scientists have never got any real proof of their existence.

06:24Such holes are insanely old and quite tiny.

06:27By black hole standards, that is.

06:29Astronomers believe they could appear several milliseconds after the Big Bang.

06:33At that time, stars and galaxies weren't born yet.

06:37It means primordial black holes probably witnessed the entire history of the universe.

06:42By now, the smallest primordial black holes have most likely evaporated away,

06:46but some bigger ones can still be scattered out there in space.

06:50If primordial black holes indeed existed,

06:53they could appear because in some regions of space,

06:55it was hotter, other regions were cooler,

06:58and some areas were extremely dense.

07:01Scientists believe these dense spots could collapse into primordial black holes.

07:05The most curious thing, though?

07:07These holes might be so small exactly because they popped up right after the Big Bang.

07:11The thing is, the longer it took a black hole to appear, the larger it was.

07:16The mass difference between older, smaller, and younger, bigger black holes was incredible.

07:22Compare the mass a thousand times greater than our sun's and that of a pea.

07:26There you go.

07:27Anyway, the idea of the connection between primordial black holes and dark matter,

07:32or rather, the idea of them being the same thing,

07:35remained unpopular for decades.

07:37But recently, scientists have realized there are many more black holes in the universe than they used to think,

07:44and it means that the theory might actually work.

07:46And the vast and still hidden from us,

07:49population of Big Bang black holes,

07:51could not only make up but be dark matter.

07:54After all, astronomers haven't discovered a single dark matter particle yet,

07:59even after decades of searching.

08:00Nothing.

08:24Nothing.

08:24Anything.

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