Discovering the origin of the heaviest object in the universe

According to Live Science , through simulations, a research team from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics created a black hole with a mass 300 billion times that of our Sun.

The simulation was designed to find the origin of black holes at the center of galaxies with masses 10 billion times that of the Sun. In addition to the supermassive black holes that are known, scientists sometimes discover supermassive black holes with masses far beyond what humans can imagine. They are often called the heaviest objects in the universe.

Simulation of the combination of three quasar systems by Harvard-Smithsonian. (Image: Harvard-Smithsonian)

A typical example is in 2019, scientists for the first time observed the phenomenon of three galaxies colliding, putting the supermassive black holes at their centers into orbit to merge. The collision was nearly 1 billion light years away from Earth, in the star system SDSS J084905.51+111447.2. To observe this phenomenon, astronomers needed to use both ground-based and space telescopes.

Using a high-resolution cosmological simulation called ASTRID, the Harvard-Smithsonian team modeled the evolution of the universe as it emerged about 11 billion years ago. In the simulation, the team saw the birth of a supermassive black hole following the merger of three galaxies. Each of these galaxies contained its own quasar, a supermassive black hole that sucks in matter and emits intense radiation that can outshine all the stars in their host galaxies combined.

When the quasar trio meets, they form an even larger black hole and trigger a “frenzy” of mass attraction that allows the combined object to reach a supermassive state.

“We found a very rare system containing a triple quasar at the cosmic ‘noon’ – about 11 billion years before galaxies and supermassive black holes reached their peak activity,” said Dr Yueying Ni, who led the research team.

“The system consists of three quasars powered by supermassive black holes, each of which is 10 times the mass of our Milky Way galaxy,” he added.

Supermassive black holes on a collision course as three galaxies collide in the star system SDSS J084905.51+111447.2. (Image: NASA)

Supercomputer simulations show three galaxies with supermassive black holes at their centres merging into one galaxy with a 'supermassive' black hole at its centre.

The team's simulations show that the triple quasar merger lasted 150 million years and created the most massive black hole in the entire simulation, with a mass 300 billion times greater than that of our Sun, even larger than all the stars in the Milky Way combined.

According to Yueying Ni, the combination of a triple quasar system and the collision of three galaxies is extremely rare. This explains why scientists have not been able to detect them or observe the formation of a supermassive black hole from such an event.

The Harvard-Smithsonian team's research was published in the Astrophysical Journal on November 30, 2022.

Tra Khanh (Source: Live Science)

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