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One of the peculiarities of the discovery announced this Thursday by the astronomers of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) is related to the event calendar. It is the first time that so soon after the Big Bang, scientists have observed a group of galaxies near a supermassive black hole. On the other hand, scientists have managed to observe some of the fainter galaxies ever observed. The work, says a press release on the discovery made with the help of the VLT (Very Large Telescope) telescope, gives new clues about these incredible objects and reinforces “the theory that black holes can grow rapidly inside huge structures in en form of cobwebs, feeding on the enormous amounts of gas that exist there ”.
“We conducted this work with the goal of better understanding one of the most challenging astronomical objects: supermassive black holes in the early Universe. These black holes are quite extreme systems and to date we don’t have a convincing explanation for their existence, ”says Marco Mignoli, an astronomer at the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics (INAF) in Bologna, Italy, and lead author of an article published this Thursday. in the magazine Astronomy and Astrophysics Charts, quoted in an ESO statement.
Black holes are extraordinarily dense entities, and many of them form when stars (bigger than our Sun) collapse at the end of their life cycle. Supermassive black holes (like the one in the center of our Milky Way) are the largest in existence, they devour matter and radiation, and are believed to be the result of merging with other black holes.
Scientists now announce that observations with the VLT “have revealed several galaxies around a supermassive black hole, all of which are located in the ‘cobweb’ of cosmic gas that extends in space in a dimension approximately 300 times the size. of the Milky Way ”. “The threads of the cosmic web are like the threads of a web. Galaxies stay and grow where the filaments intersect and the gas streams, available to feed both the galaxies and the central supermassive black hole, run along the filaments, ”explains Marco Mignoli.
The radiation emitted by the immense net captured has now traveled to us since the time the Universe was only 900 million years old. “Our work placed an important piece in the puzzle, which is still very incomplete, which is the formation and growth of these objects. [buracos negros supermaciços], so extreme but relatively abundant, so fast after the Big Bang ”, highlights co-author Roberto Gilli, also an astronomer at the INAF in Bologna, in the same statement.
Astronomers believe that the huge cosmic gas web and surrounding galaxies contain enough energy to “power” a black hole and allow it to grow into a supermassive giant in no time. However, going a little further, how were these networks born? “Astronomers believe that the giant halos of the mysterious dark matter are the key. These huge regions of invisible matter are believed to attract huge amounts of gas in the early Universe; together, gas and invisible dark matter form these lattice-like structures where galaxies and black holes can develop ”, responds the ESO paper.
The powerful observing instruments currently available have made it possible to go further and with greater clarity to detect structures that until now were hidden from astronomers. The captured galaxies are among the dimmest ever observed. And a total of six were detected, and the team confirmed the connection between four and the black hole. “We think we have seen only the tip of the iceberg and we think that the few galaxies we have discovered so far around this supermassive black hole are the brightest,” said co-author Barbara Balmaverde, an astronomer at the INAF in Turin, Italy.
