Supermassive black holes not so massive say scientists

According to scientists, “supermassive” black holes may not be as large as they once were.

The supermassive black hole’s core, which is located at the center of a very distant galaxy and has a mass that is “only” equal to “only” one billion suns, was revealed to the media on Thursday, according to astronomers. This is in addition to the breakthrough study of a distant quasar, which is an extremely bright, active core of a very distant galaxy.

The University of Southampton’s team used state-of-the-art equipment from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile to observe the galaxy, which is located more than 12 billion light years away, in collaboration with European colleagues.

Associate Professor Christian Wolf reported to ANU Reporter that despite the quasar’s extreme luminosity, the black hole’s core had a mass that was “only” equal to “around 1 billion suns.”

He added that the black hole was “belching up” gas, driven outward by the blinding intensity of light rather than spinning as expected.

Wolf and his associates at the Australian National University (ANU) first discovered the black hole at the center of this young galaxy in 2024.

The discovery, according to Southampton professor Seb Hoenig, helps to solve a long-standing mystery.

“We have been asking ourselves for years how it is possible that we found all these fully developed supermassive black holes in relatively young galaxies shortly after the Big Bang. He told the Press Association (PA) that they shouldn’t have had the opportunity to grow that much.

The study used Gravity+, an instrument that combines the light from ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile with light from four of the largest telescopes in the world, to publish in Astronomy and Astrophysics. The hot gas that was injected into the black hole was analysed by the team, which included researchers from France, Germany, Portugal, and Belgium as well.

Their findings suggest that the black hole doesn’t lose mass as quickly as previously thought because most of the gas is being blown away by intense radiation.

Hoenig told PA, “Think of it like a cosmic hairdryer set at its best,” adding that “the intense radiation around it is blowing everything away that approaches.”