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Discovery of a Supermassive Black Hole Defying Expectations
Context
A team of researchers using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and the Chandra X-ray Observatory has discovered a surprising black hole, named LID-568, that could help to understand how supermassive black holes form and grow.
What Is a Supermassive Black Hole?
- Supermassive black holes are huge black holes found at the centers of many galaxies, including our own Milky Way.
- They can be millions to billions of times heavier than the Sun.
- For example, the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* at the center of the Milky Way is about 3 million times the mass of our Sun.
Despite their size, scientists aren’t entirely sure how these black holes grow so massive, especially when the universe was still young.
What Makes LID-568 Special?
- LID-568 is a low-mass supermassive black hole that existed only 5 billion years after the Big Bang (when the universe was around 8 years old in human terms).
- This black hole was found to be feeding (eating matter) at an incredibly fast rate—40 times faster than what scientists thought was the upper limit for black holes.
- It's a "super-Eddington" black hole, meaning it is pulling in matter at a rate higher than the normal limit.
- Why Is This Important? Normally, black holes can only pull in matter until the energy from the material (as it heats up and radiates) pushes back, preventing the black hole from growing any faster. This is known as the Eddington limit.
- LID-568 is breaking this rule by feeding at a much higher rate, which has puzzled scientists.
- This discovery could change how we think about the growth of supermassive black holes, especially how they became so massive in the early universe when there wasn't enough time or matter to feed them for long periods.
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