{"id":776599,"date":"2024-02-11T09:31:51","date_gmt":"2024-02-11T14:31:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=776599"},"modified":"2024-02-11T09:31:51","modified_gmt":"2024-02-11T14:31:51","slug":"the-early-universe-had-small-galaxies-with-oversized-black-holes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=776599","title":{"rendered":"The Early Universe Had Small Galaxies with Oversized Black Holes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>When doing the marketing for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), NASA and the other telescope contributors liked to point out how it would open up the early universe to scrutiny. They weren\u2019t exaggerating, and now scientific studies are starting to proliferate that show why. A new study published by authors from Harvard, the University of Arizona, and the University of Cambridge used three surveys produced by the JWST to analyze the supermassive black holes at the center of early galaxies. And they found they were much different than the one at the center of our own, at least in terms of relative size.<\/p>\n<p><span id=\"more-165662\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Fabio Pacuci and his coauthors were looking at galaxies located 12-13 billion light years away \u2013 some of the earliest formed ones in the universe. In particular, they were looking at the size of the black holes in the center of those galaxies compared to the size of the stars the galaxies are composed of.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>For example, the ratio of the weight of stars to the weight of the supermassive black hole in the center of our home Milky Way Galaxy is about 1000 to 1 \u2013 meaning the total mass of the stars outweighs the black hole by a factor of 1000. Similar ratios have been found for other galaxies with similar ages, such as Andromeda.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<p>\n<span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"How Much of the Universe is Black Holes?\" width=\"1110\" height=\"624\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/HZr6dQw3Mv4?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/span>\n<\/p><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Fraser describes some of what we know about black holes\u2019 place in the universe.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>However, the study found something quite different in older galaxies. Their ratios were more like 100 to 1 or even as low as 1 to 1, where the supermassive black hole weighed as much as all of the stars orbiting it. This difference has \u201cimportant implications for the study of the first population of black holes,\u201d according to Xiaofui Fan, one of the study\u2019s coauthors, as mentioned in a recent press release.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>There has been an ongoing discussion about those early black holes, focused primarily on what the precursors of the supermassive black holes we know today looked like. Two competing theories have taken root for those precursors \u2013 \u201cheavy\u201d seeds and \u201clight\u201d seeds. In the \u201cheavy\u201d seed scenario, the seed materials for the supermassive black hole would mass around 10,000 to 100,000 times the mass of our Sun, while \u201clight\u201d seeds would weigh in at about 100 to 1,000 times.<\/p>\n<p>According to the new paper, the \u201cheavy\u201d seed model is more likely. It would be more likely to create large supermassive black holes, such as those seen in the JWST data, by allowing the accumulation of material from giant gas clouds to coalesce around a much larger starting mass. Simulations of this seed theory also predicted that the black holes in early galaxies would roughly mass the same as the galaxies they were surrounded by.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<p>\n<span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Remnants From the Early Universe. Primordial Black Holes\" width=\"1110\" height=\"624\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/4y8KPWEOQwA?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/span>\n<\/p><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Primordial black holes, while still theoretical, could help shed some light on the questions the paper tries to address, as Fraser explains.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>As any good scientist will tell you, if a theory or a model makes a stunning different prediction, and further data collection aligns with that prediction, then it\u2019s a very good sign for the theory. That is precisely what happened in the case of the heavy seed theory and the JWST data. As described in the paper, the data closely fits the prediction made by heavy-seed modelers.<\/p>\n<p>But it\u2019s not quite an open-and-shut case yet. Many astronomers still don\u2019t know about the early black hole formation process. But JWST isn\u2019t done yet, and the paper\u2019s authors are hopeful that further data releases will help shed light on how those seeds grow into fully-fledged black holes and what that means for how the universe was more generally formed.<\/p>\n<p>For now, they\u2019ll have to wait for some more data. But with JWST still going strong, it seems there will be plenty more papers peering into the early universe enabled by humanity\u2019s most impressive space telescope.<\/p>\n<p>Learn More:<br \/>Harvard CfA \u2013 Unexpectedly Massive Black Holes Dominate Small Galaxies in the Distant Universe<br \/>Pacucci et al. \u2013 JWST CEERS and JADES Active Galaxies at\u00a0<em>z<\/em>\u00a0= 4\u20137 Violate the Local\u00a0<em>M<\/em><sub>\u2022<\/sub>\u2013<em>M<\/em><sub>?<\/sub>\u00a0Relation at &gt;3<em>?<\/em>: Implications for Low-mass Black Holes and Seeding Models<br \/>UT \u2013 Growing Black Hole Seen Only 470 Million Years After the Big Bang<br \/>UT \u2013 Early Black Holes Were Bigger Than We Thought<\/p>\n<p>Lead Image:<br \/>Distant Universe versus Nearby Universe. <br \/>Credit: CfA\/Melissa Weiss<\/p>\n<div class=\"sharedaddy sd-block sd-like jetpack-likes-widget-wrapper jetpack-likes-widget-unloaded\" id=\"like-post-wrapper-24000880-165662-65c8d9cb41b70\" data-src=\"https:\/\/widgets.wp.com\/likes\/#blog_id=24000880&amp;post_id=165662&amp;origin=www.universetoday.com&amp;obj_id=24000880-165662-65c8d9cb41b70\" data-name=\"like-post-frame-24000880-165662-65c8d9cb41b70\" data-title=\"Like or Reblog\">\n<h3 class=\"sd-title\">Like this:<\/h3>\n<p><span class=\"button\"><span>Like<\/span><\/span> <span class=\"loading\">Loading&#8230;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"sd-text-color\"\/><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.universetoday.com\/165662\/the-early-universe-had-small-galaxies-with-oversized-black-holes\/?rand=772204\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When doing the marketing for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), NASA and the other telescope contributors liked to point out how it would open up the early universe to&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":776600,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-776599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-genaero"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=776599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776599\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/776600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=776599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=776599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=776599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}