Mysterious holes found on ocean floor have scientists ‘stumped’

These linear, peculiar-looking openings in the sand could be human made. But a more plausible explanation might be that they’re tracks left behind by an undiscovered species lurking in the deep sea. The depths of the Earth's oceans contain many secrets that often take researchers years of investigation to solve. A new mystery in the Atlantic Ocean is almost literally taking them down the rabbit hole. On July 23, along the seafloor off the coast of Portugal beneath the island chain of the Azores, scientists working with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) found a dozen sets of small holes in the sand at a depth of nearly 2 miles, with no clues of how they got there. Two weeks later and 300 miles away, they found even more mysterious holes, exactly the same as the first.

A close look at the sets of holes along the floors of the Atlantic Ocean. The origins of the holes are unclear. (NOAA Ocean Exploration) From May to September 2022, NOAA is carrying out an expedition called Voyage to the Ridge 2022 in this relatively unexplored region of the Atlantic. NOAA scientists set off from Newport, Rhode Island, to Newfoundland, Canada, on the first leg of the trip and then left Norfolk, Virginia, for the Azores. They will finish up by traversing the Atlantic in the other direction, to Puerto Rico and the Caribbean. Their research vessel, called the Okeanos Explorer, is investigating the coral and sponge colonies on volcanic ridges. Finding the holes was more of a happy accident. This isn't the first time scientists encountered these strange-looking patterns. NOAA spokesperson Emily Crum told The New York Times that in 2004, right in the vicinity of this initial discovery, researchers recorded the first sighting of the holes. “The origin of the holes has scientists stumped,” NOAA's Ocean Exploration project tweeted. “The holes look human made, but the little piles of sediment around them suggest they were excavated by … something.” “There is something important going on there and we don’t know what it is,” NOAA deep-sea biologist Michael Vecchione told the Times. “This highlights the fact that there are still mysteries out there.” Hypotheses regarding the origins of the holes range from human-made causes to the tracks of an undiscovered species of animal or a gas vent blowing bubbles up through the sand. Vecchione co-authored a paper in 2022 discussing the gaps in current knowledge of the holes and what could be causing them. According to the paper, the holes appear to have been either excavated from the top or pierced up from underneath, meaning whatever created them could have been digging the holes or burrowed under the sediment and potentially used the holes as a breathing apparatus -- like a snorkel. There's no definitive evidence to say for sure, though, and it will take more time and investigations to find the truth.

NOAA scientists use this underwater drone, called Deep Discoverer, to examine features of the seafloor up to 19,000 feet below the ocean's surface. (NOAA Ocean Exploration) Vecchione, who was present for this latest run-in with the mysterious holes, said he was happy to see them again after nearly two decades but also expressed disappointment that there are still no answers. The Okeanos Explorer is currently docked in the Azores until Aug. 6, when the vessel will set out for its third Voyage to the Ridge expedition.

To find giant black holes, start with Jupiter

Illustration of black hole, warped spacetime (stock image).

The revolution in our understanding of the night sky and our place in the universe began when we transitioned from using the naked eye to a telescope in 1609. Four centuries later, scientists are experiencing a similar transition in their knowledge of black holes by searching for gravitational waves.

In the search for previously undetected black holes that are billions of times more massive than the sun, Stephen Taylor, assistant professor of physics and astronomy and former astronomer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) together with the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) collaboration has moved the field of research forward by finding the precise location -- the center of gravity of our solar system -- with which to measure the gravitational waves that signal the existence of these black holes.

The potential presented by this advancement, co-authored by Taylor, was published in the journal the Astrophysical Journal in April 2020.

Black holes are regions of pure gravity formed from extremely warped spacetime. Finding the most titanic black holes in the Universe that lurk at the heart of galaxies will help us understand how such galaxies (including our own) have grown and evolved over the billions of years since their formation. These black holes are also unrivaled laboratories for testing fundamental assumptions about physics.

Gravitational waves are ripples in spacetime predicted by Einstein's general theory of relativity. When black holes orbit each other in pairs, they radiate gravitational waves that deform spacetime, stretching and squeezing space. Gravitational waves were first detected by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) in 2015, opening new vistas on the most extreme objects in the universe. Whereas LIGO observes relatively short gravitational waves by looking for changes in the shape of a 4-km long detector, NANOGrav, a National Science Foundation (NSF) Physics Frontiers Center, looks for changes in the shape of our entire galaxy.

Taylor and his team are searching for changes to the arrival rate of regular flashes of radio waves from pulsars. These pulsars are rapidly spinning neutron stars, some going as fast as a kitchen blender. They also send out beams of radio waves, appearing like interstellar lighthouses when these beams sweep over Earth. Over 15 years of data have shown that these pulsars are extremely reliable in their pulse arrival rates, acting as outstanding galactic clocks. Any timing deviations that are correlated across lots of these pulsars could signal the influence of gravitational waves warping our galaxy.

"Using the pulsars we observe across the Milky Way galaxy, we are trying to be like a spider sitting in stillness in the middle of her web," explains Taylor. "How well we understand the solar system barycenter is critical as we attempt to sense even the smallest tingle to the web." The solar system barycenter, its center of gravity, is the location where the masses of all planets, moons, and asteroids balance out.

Where is the center of our web, the location of absolute stillness in our solar system? Not in the center of the sun as many might assume, rather it is closer to the surface of the star. This is due to Jupiter's mass and our imperfect knowledge of its orbit. It takes 12 years for Jupiter to orbit the sun, just shy of the 15 years that NANOGrav has been collecting data. JPL's Galileo probe (named for the famed scientist that used a telescope to observe the moons of Jupiter) studied Jupiter between 1995 and 2003, but experienced technical maladies that impacted the quality of the measurements taken during the mission.

Identifying the center of the solar system's gravity has long been calculated with data from Doppler tracking to get an estimate of the location and trajectories of bodies orbiting the sun. "The catch is that errors in the masses and orbits will translate to pulsar-timing artifacts that may well look like gravitational waves," explains JPL astronomer and co-author Joe Simon.

Taylor and his collaborators were finding that working with existing solar system models to analyze NANOGrav data gave inconsistent results. "We weren't detecting anything significant in our gravitational wave searches between solar system models, but we were getting large systematic differences in our calculations," notes JPL astronomer and the paper's lead author Michele Vallisneri. "Typically, more data delivers a more precise result, but there was always an offset in our calculations."

The group decided to search for the center of gravity of the solar system at the same time as sleuthing for gravitational waves. The researchers got more robust answers to finding gravitational waves and were able to more accurately localize the center of the solar system's gravity to within 100 meters. To understand that scale, if the sun were the size of a football field, 100 meters would be the diameter of a strand of hair. "Our precise observation of pulsars scattered across the galaxy has localized ourselves in the cosmos better than we ever could before," said Taylor. "By finding gravitational waves this way, in addition to other experiments, we gain a more holistic overview of all different kinds of black holes in the Universe."

As NANOGrav continues to collect ever more abundant and precise pulsar timing data, astronomers are confident that massive black holes will show up soon and unequivocally in the data.

Taylor was partially supported by an appointment to the NASA Postdoctoral Program at JPL. The NANOGrav project receives support from the NSF Physics Frontier Center award #1430284 and this work was supported in part by NSF Grant PHYS-1066293 and by the hospitality of the Aspen Center for Physics. Data for this project were collected using the facilities of the Green Bank Observatory and the Arecibo Observatory.

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Story Source:

Materials provided by Vanderbilt University. Original written by Marissa Shapiro. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

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Journal Reference:

1. M. Vallisneri, S. R. Taylor, J. Simon, W. M. Folkner, R. S. Park, C. Cutler, J. A. Ellis, T. J. W. Lazio, S. J. Vigeland, K. Aggarwal, Z. Arzoumanian, P. T. Baker, A. Brazier, P. R. Brook, S. Burke-Spolaor, S. Chatterjee, J. M. Cordes, N. J. Cornish, F. Crawford, H. T. Cromartie, K. Crowter, M. DeCesar, P. B. Demorest, T. Dolch, R. D. Ferdman, E. C. Ferrara, E. Fonseca, N. Garver-Daniels, P. Gentile, D. Good, J. S. Hazboun, A. M. Holgado, E. A. Huerta, K. Islo, R. Jennings, G. Jones, M. L. Jones, D. L. Kaplan, L. Z. Kelley, J. S. Key, M. T. Lam, L. Levin, D. R. Lorimer, J. Luo, R. S. Lynch, D. R. Madison, M. A. McLaughlin, S. T. McWilliams, C. M. F. Mingarelli, C. Ng, D. J. Nice, T. T. Pennucci, N. S. Pol, S. M. Ransom, P. S. Ray, X. Siemens, R. Spiewak, I. H. Stairs, D. R. Stinebring, K. Stovall, J. K. Swiggum, R. van Haasteren, C. A. Witt, W. W. Zhu. Modeling the Uncertainties of Solar System Ephemerides for Robust Gravitational-wave Searches with Pulsar-timing Arrays. The Astrophysical Journal, 2020; 893 (2): 112 DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ab7b67

Astronomers find wandering massive black holes in dwarf galaxies

Artist's conception of a dwarf galaxy, its shape distorted, most likely by a past interaction with another galaxy, and a massive black hole in its outskirts (pullout). The black hole is drawing in material that forms a rotating disk and generates jets of material propelled outward.

Credit: Sophia Dagnello, NRAO/AUI/NSF

Astronomers seeking to learn about the mechanisms that formed massive black holes in the early history of the Universe have gained important new clues with the discovery of 13 such black holes in dwarf galaxies less than a billion light-years from Earth.

These dwarf galaxies, more than 100 times less massive than our own Milky Way, are among the smallest galaxies known to host massive black holes. The scientists expect that the black holes in these smaller galaxies average about 400,000 times the mass of our Sun.

"We hope that studying them and their galaxies will give us insights into how similar black holes in the early Universe formed and then grew, through galactic mergers over billions of years, producing the supermassive black holes we see in larger galaxies today, with masses of many millions or billions of times that of the Sun," said Amy Reines of Montana State University.

Reines and her colleagues used the National Science Foundation's Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) to make the discovery, which they are reporting at the American Astronomical Society's meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Reines and her collaborators used the VLA to discover the first massive black hole in a dwarf starburst galaxy in 2011. That discovery was a surprise to astronomers and spurred a radio search for more.

The scientists started by selecting a sample of galaxies from the NASA-Sloan Atlas, a catalog of galaxies made with visible-light telescopes. They chose galaxies with stars totalling less than 3 billion times the mass of the Sun, about equal to the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small companion of the Milky Way. From this sample, they picked candidates that also appeared in the National Radio Astronomy Observatory's Faint Images of the Radio Sky at Twenty centimeters (FIRST) survey, made between 1993 and 2011.

They then used the VLA to make new and more sensitive, high-resolution images of 111 of the selected galaxies.

"The new VLA observations revealed that 13 of these galaxies have strong evidence for a massive black hole that is actively consuming surrounding material. We were very surprised to find that, in roughly half of those 13 galaxies, the black hole is not at the center of the galaxy, unlike the case in larger galaxies," Reines said

The scientists said this indicates that the galaxies likely have merged with others earlier in their history. This is consistent with computer simulations predicting that roughly half of the massive black holes in dwarf galaxies will be found wandering in the outskirts of their galaxies.

"This work has taught us that we must broaden our searches for massive black holes in dwarf galaxies beyond their centers to get a more complete understanding of the population and learn what mechanisms helped form the first massive black holes in the early Universe," Reines said.

Reines worked with James Condon, of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory; Jeremy Darling, of the University of Colorado, Boulder; and Jenny Greene, of Princeton University. The astronomers are publishing their results in the Astrophysical Journal.

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation, operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc.

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Story Source:

Materials provided by National Radio Astronomy Observatory. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Astronomers find wandering massive black holes in dwarf galaxies

Artist's conception of a dwarf galaxy, its shape distorted, most likely by a past interaction with another galaxy, and a massive black hole in its outskirts (pullout). The black hole is drawing in material that forms a rotating disk and generates jets of material propelled outward.

Credit: Sophia Dagnello, NRAO/AUI/NSF

Astronomers seeking to learn about the mechanisms that formed massive black holes in the early history of the Universe have gained important new clues with the discovery of 13 such black holes in dwarf galaxies less than a billion light-years from Earth.

These dwarf galaxies, more than 100 times less massive than our own Milky Way, are among the smallest galaxies known to host massive black holes. The scientists expect that the black holes in these smaller galaxies average about 400,000 times the mass of our Sun.

"We hope that studying them and their galaxies will give us insights into how similar black holes in the early Universe formed and then grew, through galactic mergers over billions of years, producing the supermassive black holes we see in larger galaxies today, with masses of many millions or billions of times that of the Sun," said Amy Reines of Montana State University.

Reines and her colleagues used the National Science Foundation's Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) to make the discovery, which they are reporting at the American Astronomical Society's meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Reines and her collaborators used the VLA to discover the first massive black hole in a dwarf starburst galaxy in 2011. That discovery was a surprise to astronomers and spurred a radio search for more.

The scientists started by selecting a sample of galaxies from the NASA-Sloan Atlas, a catalog of galaxies made with visible-light telescopes. They chose galaxies with stars totalling less than 3 billion times the mass of the Sun, about equal to the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small companion of the Milky Way. From this sample, they picked candidates that also appeared in the National Radio Astronomy Observatory's Faint Images of the Radio Sky at Twenty centimeters (FIRST) survey, made between 1993 and 2011.

They then used the VLA to make new and more sensitive, high-resolution images of 111 of the selected galaxies.

"The new VLA observations revealed that 13 of these galaxies have strong evidence for a massive black hole that is actively consuming surrounding material. We were very surprised to find that, in roughly half of those 13 galaxies, the black hole is not at the center of the galaxy, unlike the case in larger galaxies," Reines said

The scientists said this indicates that the galaxies likely have merged with others earlier in their history. This is consistent with computer simulations predicting that roughly half of the massive black holes in dwarf galaxies will be found wandering in the outskirts of their galaxies.

"This work has taught us that we must broaden our searches for massive black holes in dwarf galaxies beyond their centers to get a more complete understanding of the population and learn what mechanisms helped form the first massive black holes in the early Universe," Reines said.

Reines worked with James Condon, of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory; Jeremy Darling, of the University of Colorado, Boulder; and Jenny Greene, of Princeton University. The astronomers are publishing their results in the Astrophysical Journal.

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation, operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc.

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Story Source:

Materials provided by National Radio Astronomy Observatory. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Black Holes … Black Suns?

Image from ESA

Stars were thought to be the principal and most important component for life to thrive… till now. Researchers from Harvard university explain that radiation coming from Black holes could do the same!

Habitable zones in outer space have been defined with respect to stars (suns), as regions where the stars radiation and energy are suitable for emergence of life. Closer or farther away from this source of energy, temperature would be too cold or too hot in order for liquid water to exist in a planet´s surface. The zones were liquid water and biological opportunity can happen are known as “Goldilocks zone”.

A new study published in The Astrophysical Journal have found such zones around supermassive black holes as well. This is quite surprising, since the surroundings of a black hole, consisting on swirling disks of gas and dust called Active Galactic Nuclei -AGN-, emit enormous amounts of radiation (mainly x-ray, gamma and ultraviolet light) that could destroy nearby planets´ atmospheres, creating a dead zone around the BH.

After numerical simulations using programs that model AGNs, researchers were able to identify such regions around the BHs and concluded that the destruction regime was highly overestimated. For instance, the damaging zone is located 100 light years away, a much shorter distance than the 3,200 light years predicted by former studies for Sagittarius A* -Milky ways´ supermassive BH-. Meanwhile, its Goldilocks region extends 140 light years from the black hole center.

Being the dangerous distance of the AGN region narrower than the total extension of the AGN zone, if placed within the remaining AGN region, a planet´s atmosphere could remain intact while at the same time the radiation of the active nuclei could break molecules to create the biological building blocks which are lipids, proteins and DNA. For a galaxy as our own, the AGN-powered photosynthesis region would extend up to 1,100 light-years out from the center of the galaxy. At the same time, light emanating from the AGN could facilitate photosynthesis, a particularly important fact for free floating planets believed to have no source of light energy around them.

“Astronomers have estimated there could be around 1 billion such rogue planets drifting in the Goldilocks zone of a Milky Way-like galaxy”

according to Manasvi.

Concerning the damaging effects of the ultraviolet and X-ray radiation in these zones, the scientists claim that bacteria on Earth created biofilms to protect themselves from ultraviolet rays, and that X-rays and gamma-rays are also readily absorbed by Earth-like atmospheres, reducing considerably their impact.

RSF in perspective:

Like the recently discovered AGN goldilocks zone, astrophysicist had already re-evaluated and extended the habitability zone due to M type stars. The increase in habitability keeps growing, which implies an exponential probability of life in outer space and therefore a high probability for intelligent life. We are most probably not alone in the galaxy. On the other hand, if black holes are so directly related to suns, wouldn´t the other direction apply? Wouldn´t suns behave or be white holes?

By Ines Urdaneta, Research Scientist at Resonance Science Foundation

More at:
Black Holes could feed Alien Life
Radiation from black holes may create life

Black holes – to be or not to be?

Those enigmatic black holes that lead to places unknown may not be what we thought they were – or at least that’s what some scientists think.

Since first proposed in 1784 by John Mitchell and their prediction in 1915 by Einstein’s theory of general relativity, evidence supporting the idea of black holes has continued to be found.

Described as infinitely dense points in space time – where not even light can escape – the presence of a black hole is thus inferred from the gravitational effects on the surrounding material. But what if something else – other than a black hole – could produce these same effects?

Such a question was addressed in two recent papers by a team of scientists at the University of Hawaii. They consider the consequences of replacing all black holes with a class of objects with ‘dark energy’ interiors known as Generic Objects of Dark Energy (GEODEs).

GEODEs, as they are now referred to, were first postulated in 1966 by Russian physicist Erast Gliner who suggested such objects as viable stellar remnants – the end point of stars.

The current understanding of stellar evolution states that for stars massive enough, the stellar remnants would be black holes. However, there are alternative models in which black hole interiors are described by a ‘dark energy’ equation of state – an equation describing the state of matter in terms of its pressure, temperature and volume, for example. Gliner thus proposed that instead of the end stage of stars gravitationally collapsing into black hole singularities, they would collapse into non-singular ‘dark energy’ objects (GEODEs) that only appear to be black holes from the outside.

Fifty years later, the Hawaiian team led by Kevin Croker and Joel Weiner started to look at the Friedman equations – the equations derived in 1922 that describe the expansion of the universe where ultra-dense regions of space such as neutron stars and black holes were treated in the same way as all other regions of space. The current understanding of a black hole is that of a singularity, which is a mathematical construct, and the physicality of such is yet to be understood. What Croker and Weiner found is that in order to incorporate black holes into the framework of an expanding universe, they can’t be singularities. When treated as non-singular GEODEs, they found that if only a fraction of the oldest stars collapsed in this way their averaged contribution would naturally produce the dark energy responsible for the accelerated expansion of the universe.

“If what we thought were black holes are actually objects without singularities, then the accelerated expansion of our universe is a natural consequence of Einstein’s theory of general relativity” – Dr Kevin Croker

The assumption made by cosmologists that the Universe is insensitive to the details of the objects it contains now it seems no longer stands. Not only does this give us a new way of looking at black holes, but also how we look at the Universe and its interconnectedness.

Further support of black holes being more like these GEODEs comes from the binary black hole merger mass found when assuming the colliding binary black holes were instead GEODEs. The resultant mass was greater than if the objects were black holes, and thus more in agreement with the 2016 LIGO-Virgo observations. Of course, this doesn’t confirm the existence of GEODEs just yet and, unfortunately, although observational signatures have been developed, there does not yet seem to be a way to distinguish between the different models.

As well, the GEODEs as proposed by Gliner and described by the team at the University of Hawaii are not the only description of such objects. In 2015, the Gravastar was described by physicists Pawel Mazur and Emil Mottola, and more than 80 years ago George McVittie proposed such a solution in which he describes a mass-particle in an expanding universe.

RSF in perspective

These ideas of objects where the interior region is made of the quantum vacuum – rather than a singularity – is very much in agreement with the unified physics perspective which sees all matter as emerging from the granular Planck scale structure of spacetime, otherwise known as the quantum vacuum. Furthermore, this quantized view of the Universe, as offered by the unified perspective in the form of the generalized holographic approach, similarly describes the expansion of the universe. Notably, the expansion of the Universe as originally proposed by George Lemaitre starts from a primeval super atom, not a singularity. Similarly, when we consider the vacuum energy of a Planck particle as it expands to the size of the Universe, we can explain the expansion of the Universe without the need for dark energy and as well resolving the vacuum catastrophe.

Article: https://bgr.com/2019/10/02/black-hole-theory-geode-study/

Life Giving Black Holes

Those hungry, all devouring black holes may in fact be much more generous than we have been led to believe.

Black holes are often given bad press. This, however, is not indicative to their true nature, which is in fact quite stable. A team of scientists are now looking to do away with all the bad press and have proposed that black holes are in fact life givers.

Traditionally when thinking about life in the universe – other than our own – we look to stars and something known as the Goldilocks zone. Like its namesake, the Goldilocks zone is not too hot and not too cold – it’s just right. That is, the temperature is just right for liquid water and thus life to exist. Albeit, these assumptions about what is just right for life to exist are just that –assumptions – based on what we know as life.

It is now known that the central nuclei of galaxies are home to a super massive black hole. The gas surrounding the central black hole is thus very luminous and, in some cases, can be more luminous than the rest of the galactic light. Such luminous galactic nuclei are known as Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN). As well as being luminous, they are known for emitting at the high energy range, creating so-called ‘dead zones’ of radiation.

Three Harvard scientists – Manasvi Lingam, Idan Ginsburg and Shmuel Bialy – wanted to investigate just how detrimental this radiation is. Modelling the effects of the AGN’s radiative field, they were able to compute a galactic Goldilocks zone around the central black hole. Like the traditional Goldilocks zone around stars, any planets in this zone would be conducive to life. In fact, they found that not only would the planet’s atmosphere be unscathed, but as well the radiation would mediate prebiotic synthesis of biomolecular building blocks.

RSF in perspective

From a unified science perspective, where matter emerges from the granular Planck scale structure of space time, this same ‘black hole’ dynamic exists in stars. So, the idea that a black hole should also be conducive to life comes as no surprise. This new research into black holes as life givers will hopefully lead to new insights and a better understanding of the key processes involved in galactic evolution, planetary and solar system formation, and indeed life.

Article: https://www.sciencealert.com/radiation-from-black-holes-may-create-life-harvard-study-suggests

ESO observations reveal black holes' breakfast at the cosmic dawn

This image shows one of the gas halos newly observed with the MUSE instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope superimposed to an older image of a galaxy merger obtained with ALMA. The large-scale halo of hydrogen gas is shown in blue, while the ALMA data is shown in orange.

Credit: ESO/Farina et al.; ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), Decarli et al.

Astronomers using ESO's Very Large Telescope have observed reservoirs of cool gas around some of the earliest galaxies in the Universe. These gas halos are the perfect food for supermassive black holes at the centre of these galaxies, which are now seen as they were over 12.5 billion years ago. This food storage might explain how these cosmic monsters grew so fast during a period in the Universe's history known as the Cosmic Dawn.

"We are now able to demonstrate, for the first time, that primordial galaxies do have enough food in their environments to sustain both the growth of supermassive black holes and vigorous star formation," says Emanuele Paolo Farina, of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany, who led the research published today in The Astrophysical Journal. "This adds a fundamental piece to the puzzle that astronomers are building to picture how cosmic structures formed more than 12 billion years ago."

Astronomers have wondered how supermassive black holes were able to grow so large so early on in the history of the Universe. "The presence of these early monsters, with masses several billion times the mass of our Sun, is a big mystery," says Farina, who is also affiliated with the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching bei München. It means that the first black holes, which might have formed from the collapse of the first stars, must have grown very fast. But, until now, astronomers had not spotted 'black hole food' -- gas and dust -- in large enough quantities to explain this rapid growth.

To complicate matters further, previous observations with ALMA, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, revealed a lot of dust and gas in these early galaxies that fuelled rapid star formation. These ALMA observations suggested that there could be little left over to feed a black hole.

To solve this mystery, Farina and his colleagues used the MUSE instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope in the Chilean Atacama Desert to study quasars -- extremely bright objects powered by supermassive black holes which lie at the centre of massive galaxies. The study surveyed 31 quasars that are seen as they were more than 12.5 billion years ago, at a time when the Universe was still an infant, only about 870 million years old. This is one of the largest samples of quasars from this early on in the history of the Universe to be surveyed.

The astronomers found that 12 quasars were surrounded by enormous gas reservoirs: halos of cool, dense hydrogen gas extending 100,000 light years from the central black holes and with billions of times the mass of the Sun. The team, from Germany, the US, Italy and Chile, also found that these gas halos were tightly bound to the galaxies, providing the perfect food source to sustain both the growth of supermassive black holes and vigorous star formation.

The research was possible thanks to the superb sensitivity of MUSE, the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer, on ESO's VLT, which Farina says was "a game changer" in the study of quasars. "In a matter of a few hours per target, we were able to delve into the surroundings of the most massive and voracious black holes present in the young Universe," he adds. While quasars are bright, the gas reservoirs around them are much harder to observe. But MUSE could detect the faint glow of the hydrogen gas in the halos, allowing astronomers to finally reveal the food stashes that power supermassive black holes in the early Universe.

In the future, ESO's Extremely Large Telescope will help scientists reveal even more details about galaxies and supermassive black holes in the first couple of billion years after the Big Bang. "With the power of the ELT, we will be able to delve even deeper into the early Universe to find many more such gas nebulae," Farina concludes.

Story Source:

Materials provided by ESO. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

ESO observations reveal black holes' breakfast at the cosmic dawn

This image shows one of the gas halos newly observed with the MUSE instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope superimposed to an older image of a galaxy merger obtained with ALMA. The large-scale halo of hydrogen gas is shown in blue, while the ALMA data is shown in orange.

Credit: ESO/Farina et al.; ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), Decarli et al.

Astronomers using ESO's Very Large Telescope have observed reservoirs of cool gas around some of the earliest galaxies in the Universe. These gas halos are the perfect food for supermassive black holes at the centre of these galaxies, which are now seen as they were over 12.5 billion years ago. This food storage might explain how these cosmic monsters grew so fast during a period in the Universe's history known as the Cosmic Dawn.

"We are now able to demonstrate, for the first time, that primordial galaxies do have enough food in their environments to sustain both the growth of supermassive black holes and vigorous star formation," says Emanuele Paolo Farina, of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany, who led the research published today in The Astrophysical Journal. "This adds a fundamental piece to the puzzle that astronomers are building to picture how cosmic structures formed more than 12 billion years ago."

Astronomers have wondered how supermassive black holes were able to grow so large so early on in the history of the Universe. "The presence of these early monsters, with masses several billion times the mass of our Sun, is a big mystery," says Farina, who is also affiliated with the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching bei München. It means that the first black holes, which might have formed from the collapse of the first stars, must have grown very fast. But, until now, astronomers had not spotted 'black hole food' -- gas and dust -- in large enough quantities to explain this rapid growth.

To complicate matters further, previous observations with ALMA, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, revealed a lot of dust and gas in these early galaxies that fuelled rapid star formation. These ALMA observations suggested that there could be little left over to feed a black hole.

To solve this mystery, Farina and his colleagues used the MUSE instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope in the Chilean Atacama Desert to study quasars -- extremely bright objects powered by supermassive black holes which lie at the centre of massive galaxies. The study surveyed 31 quasars that are seen as they were more than 12.5 billion years ago, at a time when the Universe was still an infant, only about 870 million years old. This is one of the largest samples of quasars from this early on in the history of the Universe to be surveyed.

The astronomers found that 12 quasars were surrounded by enormous gas reservoirs: halos of cool, dense hydrogen gas extending 100,000 light years from the central black holes and with billions of times the mass of the Sun. The team, from Germany, the US, Italy and Chile, also found that these gas halos were tightly bound to the galaxies, providing the perfect food source to sustain both the growth of supermassive black holes and vigorous star formation.

The research was possible thanks to the superb sensitivity of MUSE, the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer, on ESO's VLT, which Farina says was "a game changer" in the study of quasars. "In a matter of a few hours per target, we were able to delve into the surroundings of the most massive and voracious black holes present in the young Universe," he adds. While quasars are bright, the gas reservoirs around them are much harder to observe. But MUSE could detect the faint glow of the hydrogen gas in the halos, allowing astronomers to finally reveal the food stashes that power supermassive black holes in the early Universe.

In the future, ESO's Extremely Large Telescope will help scientists reveal even more details about galaxies and supermassive black holes in the first couple of billion years after the Big Bang. "With the power of the ELT, we will be able to delve even deeper into the early Universe to find many more such gas nebulae," Farina concludes.

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