Let’s admit it: there are a lot of conundrums about our Cosmos that astronomers struggle even today to untangle. But they might not have the correct answer when it comes to how the oldest black holes from the Universe form. For decades, scientists couldn’t explain how supermassive black holes formed during the first billion years after the Big Bang.
According to The Independent, an international team of cosmologists might finally have the answer to the question. They believe that gigantic primordial stars had to do with the emergence of the supermassive black holes. The scientists suspect that dark matter gave shape to flows of cold matter that were force-feeding ravenous black holes. Those black holes are the result of huge primordial stars burning up their fuel.
Daniel Whalen, who’s a cosmologist at the University of Portsmouth, explained for The Independent, as the publication quotes:
There is a recipe for creating a 100,000 solar mass black hole at birth, and that is a 100,000 solar mass primordial star,
In the universe today, the only black holes we’ve discovered, all formed from the collapse of massive stars. So that means the minimum mass for a black hole likely has to be at least three to four solar masses.
Supermassive black holes are known to exist in huge numbers across the Cosmos. Astronomers believe that there has to be a supermassive black hole at the core of each galaxy. One surely exists at the heart of our own Milky Way galaxy, that’s for sure, and it’s known as Sagittarius A*. Surprisingly enough, supermassive black holes at the center of galaxies even have some beneficial roles for those systems of stars.
Feel free to read the full article on the formation of early supermassive black holes in The Independent!