00:02visit chandra's beautiful universe rex j0320-35 astronomers have discovered a black hole that is
00:12growing at one of the fastest rates ever recorded this discovery from nasa's chandra x-ray observatory
00:19may help explain how some black holes can reach enormous masses relatively quickly after the big
00:24bang the black hole weighs about a billion times the mass of the sun and is located about 12.8
00:30billion light years from earth meaning that astronomers are seeing it only 920 million
00:36years after the universe began it is producing more x-rays than any other black hole seen in the
00:42first billion years of the universe the black hole is powering what scientists call a quasar
00:48an extremely bright object that outshines entire galaxies the power source of this glowing monster
00:55is large amounts of matter funneling around and entering the black hole while the same team
01:01discovered it two years ago it took observations from chandra in 2023 to discover what sets this
01:07quasar racks j0320-35 apart the x-ray data reveal that this black hole appears to be growing at a
01:16rate
01:16that exceeds the normal limit for these objects when matter is pulled toward a black hole it is heated
01:23and produces x-rays and optical light this radiation creates pressure by pushing out on the matter
01:29which counteracts the force of gravity pulling the matter in toward the black hole when the amount
01:35of matter becomes large enough the pressure from the radiation overpowers the force of gravity
01:39giving a limit on how quickly matter can typically fall toward a black hole called the eddington rate
01:46scientists think that black holes growing more slowly than the eddington rate need to be born with
01:50masses of about 10 000 suns or more so they can reach a billion solar masses within a billion years
01:56after the big bang like they have observed in racks j0320-35 a black hole with such a high birth
02:04mass
02:05could directly result from an exotic process the collapse of a huge cloud of dense gas containing unusually low
02:12amounts of elements heavier than helium conditions that may be extremely rare
02:17if racks j0320-35 is indeed growing at a high rate estimated at 2.4 times the eddington limit
02:25and has done so for a sustained amount of time its black hole could have started out in a more
02:30conventional way
02:31with a mass less than 100 suns caused by the implosion of a massive star
02:38by knowing the mass of the black hole and working out how quickly it's growing
02:41the researchers were able to work backwards to estimate how massive it could have been at birth
02:47with this calculation astronomers can test different ideas about how black holes are born
02:53this result has implications for how some of the universe's first generation of black holes formed
02:59which remains one of the biggest questions in astrophysics
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