Using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, astronomers have found evidence for what is likely the most massive black holes ever detected.
A massive black hole can be seen at the center of a faraway galaxy in this artist’s concept. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.
“A black hole is an invisible celestial object whose gravitational pull is so strong that neither matter nor light can escape it — it swallows everything in its path like a bottomless vortex,” said Professor Julie Hlavacek-Larrondo, from the Université de Montréal.
“A black hole is most often created when a massive star dies and collapses on itself. The most fascinating thing about black holes is how they distort time around them. According to Einstein’s theory of relativity, time flows more slowly in strong gravitational fields, like those of these gargantuan celestial objects.”
In their search for massive black holes, Professor Hlavacek-Larrondo and co-authors studied 72 galaxies located at the center of the Universe’s brightest and most massive galaxy clusters.
They calculated the masses of the black holes detected in these galaxy clusters, which are 3.5 billion light-years away from Earth, by analyzing their radio wave and X-ray emissions.
The results showed that the masses of the black holes are roughly 10 times greater than those originally projected calculated using a different method which assumes that black holes grow in tandem with their galaxies.
Furthermore, almost half of the sample’s black holes are estimated to be at least 10 billion times more massive than our Sun.
This puts them in a class of extreme heavyweights that astronomers call ‘ultramassive black holes.’
“We have discovered black holes that are far larger and way more massive than anticipated,” said co-lead author Dr. Mar Mezcua, a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Space Sciences in Spain.
“Are they so big because they had a head start or because certain ideal conditions allowed them to grow more rapidly over billions of years? For the moment, there is no way for us to know.”
“We do know that black holes are extraordinary phenomena, so it’s no surprise that the most extreme specimens defy the rules that we have established up until now,” Professor Hlavacek-Larrondo said.
Details of the research were recently published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
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M. Mezcua et al. 2018. The most massive black holes on the Fundamental Plane of black hole accretion. MNRAS 474 (1): 1342-1360; doi: 10.1093/mnras/stx2812
