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By NASA
This illustration shows a red, early-universe dwarf galaxy that hosts a rapidly feeding black hole at its center. Using data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory, a team of astronomers have discovered this low-mass supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy just 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang. It is pulling in matter at a phenomenal rate — over 40 times the theoretical limit. While short lived, this black hole’s “feast” could help astronomers explain how supermassive black holes grew so quickly in the early universe.NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/J. da Silva/M. Zamani A rapidly feeding black hole at the center of a dwarf galaxy in the early universe, shown in this artist’s concept, may hold important clues to the evolution of supermassive black holes in general.
Using data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory, a team of astronomers discovered this low-mass supermassive black hole just 1.5 billion years after the big bang. The black hole is pulling in matter at a phenomenal rate — over 40 times the theoretical limit. While short lived, this black hole’s “feast” could help astronomers explain how supermassive black holes grew so quickly in the early universe.
Supermassive black holes exist at the center of most galaxies, and modern telescopes continue to observe them at surprisingly early times in the universe’s evolution. It’s difficult to understand how these black holes were able to grow so big so rapidly. But with the discovery of a low-mass supermassive black hole feasting on material at an extreme rate so soon after the birth of the universe, astronomers now have valuable new insights into the mechanisms of rapidly growing black holes in the early universe.
The black hole, called LID-568, was hidden among thousands of objects in the Chandra X-ray Observatory’s COSMOS legacy survey, a catalog resulting from some 4.6 million Chandra observations. This population of galaxies is very bright in the X-ray light, but invisible in optical and previous near-infrared observations. By following up with Webb, astronomers could use the observatory’s unique infrared sensitivity to detect these faint counterpart emissions, which led to the discovery of the black hole.
The speed and size of these outflows led the team to infer that a substantial fraction of the mass growth of LID-568 may have occurred in a single episode of rapid accretion.
LID-568 appears to be feeding on matter at a rate 40 times its Eddington limit. This limit relates to the maximum amount of light that material surrounding a black hole can emit, as well as how fast it can absorb matter, such that its inward gravitational force and outward pressure generated from the heat of the compressed, infalling matter remain in balance.
These results provide new insights into the formation of supermassive black holes from smaller black hole “seeds,” which current theories suggest arise either from the death of the universe’s first stars (light seeds) or the direct collapse of gas clouds (heavy seeds). Until now, these theories lacked observational confirmation.
The new discovery suggests that “a significant portion of mass growth can occur during a single episode of rapid feeding, regardless of whether the black hole originated from a light or heavy seed,” said International Gemini Observatory/NSF NOIRLab astronomer Hyewon Suh, who led the research team.
A paper describing these results (“A super-Eddington-accreting black hole ~1.5 Gyr after the Big Bang observed with JWST”) appears in the journal Nature Astronomy.
About the Missions
NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center manages the Chandra program. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s Chandra X-ray Center controls science operations from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and flight operations from Burlington, Massachusetts.
The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).
Read more from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory.
Learn more about the Chandra X-ray Observatory and its mission here:
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https://chandra.si.edu
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NASA Headquarters
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lane.e.figueroa@nasa.gov
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By NASA
4 min read
NASA’s Swift Studies Gas-Churning Monster Black Holes
A pair of monster black holes swirl in a cloud of gas in this artist’s concept of AT 2021hdr, a recurring outburst studied by NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory and the Zwicky Transient Facility at Palomar Observatory in California. NASA/Aurore Simonnet (Sonoma State University) Scientists using observations from NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory have discovered, for the first time, the signal from a pair of monster black holes disrupting a cloud of gas in the center of a galaxy.
“It’s a very weird event, called AT 2021hdr, that keeps recurring every few months,” said Lorena Hernández-García, an astrophysicist at the Millennium Institute of Astrophysics, the Millennium Nucleus on Transversal Research and Technology to Explore Supermassive Black Holes, and University of Valparaíso in Chile. “We think that a gas cloud engulfed the black holes. As they orbit each other, the black holes interact with the cloud, perturbing and consuming its gas. This produces an oscillating pattern in the light from the system.”
A paper about AT 2021hdr, led by Hernández-García, was published Nov. 13 in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.
The dual black holes are in the center of a galaxy called 2MASX J21240027+3409114, located 1 billion light-years away in the northern constellation Cygnus. The pair are about 16 billion miles (26 billion kilometers) apart, close enough that light only takes a day to travel between them. Together they contain 40 million times the Sun’s mass.
Scientists estimate the black holes complete an orbit every 130 days and will collide and merge in approximately 70,000 years.
AT 2021hdr was first spotted in March 2021 by the Caltech-led ZTF (Zwicky Transient Facility) at the Palomar Observatory in California. It was flagged as a potentially interesting source by ALeRCE (Automatic Learning for the Rapid Classification of Events). This multidisciplinary team combines artificial intelligence tools with human expertise to report events in the night sky to the astronomical community using the mountains of data collected by survey programs like ZTF.
“Although this flare was originally thought to be a supernova, outbursts in 2022 made us think of other explanations,” said co-author Alejandra Muñoz-Arancibia, an ALeRCE team member and astrophysicist at the Millennium Institute of Astrophysics and the Center for Mathematical Modeling at the University of Chile. “Each subsequent event has helped us refine our model of what’s going on in the system.”
Since the first flare, ZTF has detected outbursts from AT 2021hdr every 60 to 90 days.
Hernández-García and her team have been observing the source with Swift since November 2022. Swift helped them determine that the binary produces oscillations in ultraviolet and X-ray light on the same time scales as ZTF sees them in the visible range.
The researchers conducted a Goldilocks-type elimination of different models to explain what they saw in the data.
Initially, they thought the signal could be the byproduct of normal activity in the galactic center. Then they considered whether a tidal disruption event — the destruction of a star that wandered too close to one of the black holes — could be the cause.
Finally, they settled on another possibility, the tidal disruption of a gas cloud, one that was bigger than the binary itself. When the cloud encountered the black holes, gravity ripped it apart, forming filaments around the pair, and friction started to heat it. The gas got particularly dense and hot close to the black holes. As the binary orbits, the complex interplay of forces ejects some of the gas from the system on each rotation. These interactions produce the fluctuating light Swift and ZTF observe.
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Watch as a gas cloud encounters two supermassive black holes in this simulation. The complex interplay of gravitational and frictional forces causes the cloud to condense and heat. Some of the gas is ejected from the system with each orbit of the black holes. F. Goicovic et al. 2016 Hernández-García and her team plan to continue observations of AT 2021hdr to better understand the system and improve their models. They’re also interested in studying its home galaxy, which is currently merging with another one nearby — an event first reported in their paper.
“As Swift approaches its 20th anniversary, it’s incredible to see all the new science it’s still helping the community accomplish,” said S. Bradley Cenko, Swift’s principal investigator at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “There’s still so much it has left to teach us about our ever-changing cosmos.”
NASA’s missions are part of a growing, worldwide network watching for changes in the sky to solve mysteries of how the universe works.
Goddard manages the Swift mission in collaboration with Penn State, the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, and Northrop Grumman Space Systems in Dulles, Virginia. Other partners include the University of Leicester and Mullard Space Science Laboratory in the United Kingdom, Brera Observatory in Italy, and the Italian Space Agency.
Download high-resolution images and videos.
By Jeanette Kazmierczak
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Media Contact:
Claire Andreoli
301-286-1940
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
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Last Updated Nov 13, 2024 Editor Jeanette Kazmierczak Related Terms
Astrophysics Black Holes Galaxies, Stars, & Black Holes Galaxies, Stars, & Black Holes Research Goddard Space Flight Center Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory Science & Research Supermassive Black Holes The Universe View the full article
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By NASA
Learn Home Integrating Relevant Science… Earth Science Overview Learning Resources Science Activation Teams SME Map Opportunities More Science Activation Stories Citizen Science 3 min read
Integrating Relevant Science Investigations into Migrant Children Education
For three weeks in August, over 100 migrant children (ages 3-15) got to engage in hands-on activities involving blueberries, pollinators, and eDNA as part of their time with The Blueberry Harvest School (BHS). BHS is a summer school program for migrant children whose families work in Washington County, Maine during the wild blueberry harvest season. The program is hosted by Mano en Mano in Milbridge, Maine. This summer, University of Maine 4-H (part of the NASA Science Activation Program’s Learning Ecosystems Northeast team) was invited to deliver enrichment programs during the school day alongside a seasoned BHS employee – an educator from the Mi’kmaq community in what is now known as Nova Scotia.
The goal of BHS is to meet the needs of youth by providing “culturally responsive, project-based learning while preventing summer learning loss and compensating for school disruptions among students” (Mano en Mano). Migrant families come to Downeast from Mi’kmaq First Nation communities in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, southern states, and from within Maine, including Passamoquoddy communities in eastern Washington County and a Latino community in the western part of the county. Families stay to harvest blueberries anywhere from two to five weeks. With support from 4-H educators, youth surveyed the schoolyard for pollinators, investigated the parts of pollinators and flowers, and learned why blueberries are an important part of Wabanaki culture.
“BHS really becomes a home for the children while they are here. I think one of the reasons is because they are encouraged to be proud of their identity and who they are – they get to be their authentic selves. It’s a neat space where teachers and youth are speaking Mi’kmaq, Passamaquoddy, Spanish and English while supporting each other, and learning and experiencing new things.” — Gabrielle Brodek, 4-H Professional
“After completing my second year helping at Blueberry Harvest School, I loved seeing the returning faces of the kids who have been coming year after year – the kids remember you and hug you and are sad when the season is over and BHS ends.” — Jason Palomo, 4-H Professional
Resources and inspiration for these activities came from NASA Climate Kids, Gulf of Maine Research Institute’s Bees, Blueberries, and Climate Change learning module, National 4-H and ME Ag in the Classroom. On the last day youth experienced how to make a natural dye out of blueberries, a long-standing tradition in Native American culture. Our organizations continue to work together year-round, building stronger relationships and planning for Summer 2025!
The Learning Ecosystems Northeast project is supported by NASA under cooperative agreement award number NNX16AB94A and is part of NASA’s Science Activation Portfolio. Learn more about how Science Activation connects NASA science experts, real content, and experiences with community leaders to do science in ways that activate minds and promote deeper understanding of our world and beyond: https://science.nasa.gov/learn
Educator assisting two youth with paper folding instructions. Share
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Last Updated Nov 06, 2024 Editor NASA Science Editorial Team Related Terms
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By USH
Over the years, numerous mysterious events have been witnessed in the sky, defying explanation. Recently, yet another unusual sky phenomenon was observed over Southern Australia capturing attention and sparking curiosity.
Video footage reveals what appears to be a dome-shaped structure, with an even stranger detail: lightning seems to bounce off or perhaps even originate from within the dome.
The mysterious formation has led to numerous theories. Some viewers suggest it could be a unique (red) rainbow or a rare weather event like a haboob (sandstorm). Others speculate it might be the result of weather manipulation or even an energy field projected over the region.
Opinions also vary on the lightning, some say it’s bouncing off the dome, while others believe it could be emanating from within. Although it may just be an unusual natural phenomenon, the seemly strange interaction with the lightning remains unexplained.
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