Astronomers discover 83 super-massive black holes in the early universe

Astromers have discovered 83 quasars powered by supermassive black holes 13 billion light-years away from Earth, from a time when universe was less than 10 per cent of its present .

"It is remarkable that such massive dense objects were able to form so soon after Big Bang," said Michael Strauss, a professor at Princeton University in US.

"Understanding how black holes can form in early universe, and just how common y are, is a challenge for our cosmological models," Strauss said in a statement.

This finding, published in Astrophysical Journal, increases number of black holes kwn at that epoch considerably, and reveals, for first time, how common y are early in universe's history.

In dition, it provides new insight into effect of black holes on physical state of gas in early universe in its first billion years.

Supermassive black holes, found at centres of galaxies, can be millions or even billions of times more massive than Sun.

While y are prevalent today, it is unclear when y first formed, and how many existed in distant early universe.

A supermassive black hole becomes visible when gas accretes onto it, causing it to shine as a "quasar."

Previous studies have been sensitive only to very rare, most lumius quasars, and thus most massive black holes.

new discoveries probe population of fainter quasars, powered by black holes with masses comparable to most black holes seen in present-day universe.

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team used data taken with  "Hyper Suprime-Cam" (HSC) instrument, mounted on Subaru Telescope of National Astromical Observatory of Japan, which is located on summit of Maunakea in Hawaii.

researchers selected distant quasar candidates from sensitive HSC survey data.

y n carried out an intensive observational campaign to obtain spectra of those candidates, using three telescopes: Subaru Telescope; Gran Telescopio Canarias on island of La Palma in Canaries, Spain; and Gemini South Telescope in Chile.

survey revealed 83 previously unkwn very distant quasars.

Toger with 17 quasars alrey kwn in survey region, researchers found that re is roughly one supermassive black hole per cubic giga-light-year.

sample of quasars in this study is about 13 billion light-years away from Earth.

In or words, we are seeing m as y existed 13 billion years ago.

As Big Bang took place 13.8 billion years ago, we are effectively looking back in time, seeing se quasars and supermassive black holes as y appeared only about 800 million years after creation of universe.