Baby Black Holes Present near Birth of the Universe

How black holes form is one of the biggest questions facing astronomers. For years super-massive black holes have provided a laboratory for physicists to study the light-strangling phenomenon.

Now a six-week study has revealed the first direct evidence that massive black holes were common in the early universe. Using the high-powered orbiting Chandra X-Ray Observatory pointed into deep space, scientists looked back in time to when the universe was just under one billion years old.

This composite image combines the deepest X-ray image ever taken with optical and infrared data from Hubble. Astronomers obtained what is known as the Chandra Deep Field South by pointing the Chandra telescope at the same patch of sky for over six weeks of time. The Chandra sources of this small section of the CDFS are shown in blue. Two "stacked" images, which represent a technique used to find the most distant galaxies in X-ray light, are on the right. The results from this dataset include that black holes are found to be actively growing between 800 million and 950 million years after the Big Bang.

They were surprised to discover that black holes were very common. A team of top astronomers from around the world stumbled onto an x-ray signal from the early universe. Using the deepest x-ray image ever taken, the team led by University of Hawaii’s Ezequiel Treister discovered that massive black holes were present near the beginning of the universe.

Black holes are regions of space where the gravitational pull is so great that not even light can escape from them. Before this discovery astronomers had no idea what black holes in early galaxies did or if they even existed.

Treister says, “This is a big step, not a baby step, getting us closer to understand[ing] where the black holes form and when they were created, when they started.”

The new x-ray image not only gave these astronomers a never-before-seen peek into a younger universe but it revealed the presence of black holes that had been previously obscured.

Mitchell Begelman, an astronomer from University of Colorado says, “We never saw before now the smaller black holes that must have existed before these quasars formed.”

Quasars are the brightest spots in the universe. After being mistaken for stars the strange cosmological phenomenon was discovered in the 1960s. Since then further study has shown astronomers these luminous dots are actually powered by massive rotating black holes.

Looking deep into space is like looking back in time because of the finite speed of light. So the higher the power of telescopes and imaging technology the better glimpse we will get of the earliest universe.

This discovery confirms decades of theory.

Begelman says, “Now, we are seeing the first direct evidence of these smaller black holes.”

Astronomers study the developmental stages of black holes in the same way as sociologists study people. They put the lifespan of a black hole into phases of childhood, adolescence and adulthood. These observations are the first images of young black holes. They are like seeing their high school pictures.

But like gawky teens these black holes grow quickly and powerfully, eating up all matter within reach.

Kevin Schawinski from Yale University says, “These hungry black holes are feeding on material — gas — at the centers of these galaxies and they will continue to grow from adolescence to adulthood.”

Now astronomers can move much close to the moment of birth and understand where both galaxies and super massive black holes come from.

Schawinski says, “We’ve only just scratched the surface of the first billion years of the universe with their help and there are great prospects of further discovery.”