Galaxies trapped in 'spider's web' could explain how supermassive black holes are formed

Astronomers at European Southern Observatory (ESO) have discovered a cluster of galaxies trapped in a supermassive black hole resembling a ‘spider’s web’. The findings will help the researchers to investigate how the supermassive black holes are formed and what is attributed to its gigantic size. The newly observed cosmic six galaxies are more than 300 times the size of the Milky Way and were formed less than a billion years ago. 

According to the study published in the Astronomy and Astrophysics journal on October 2, scientists observed the large web-like structure after they noticed lights emanating from the black hole that constituted over one billion solar masses. This light, as per the astronomers, has travelled to the Earth when the universe was only 900 million years old. The lead author of the study and an astronomer at the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) in Bologna, Italy, Marco Mignoli said in the research that the discovery of the spider web galaxies was mainly driven by the astronomers’ quest about the complex and challenging astronomical objects such as the supermassive black holes that were formed in the initial stages of the universe formation. 

“These are extreme systems and to date, we have had no good explanation for their existence,” Mignoli said in the study.

[The Very Large Telescope, or VLT. Photo Credit: ESO]

The immense structure comprising of the supermassive black hole and six galaxies tangled in a web-like structure was first detected by European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT). The intriguing structure consisted of the quasar "SDSS J1030+0524” the cosmic gases and the incredibly bright sources of light which was observed by the international team of astronomers. The Quasars are now to consist of a supermassive black hole at its dense center with a disk of gas termed as "accretion disk." 

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“The cosmic web filaments are like spider's web threads," Mignoli  said, adding, “the galaxies stand and grow where the filaments cross, and the streams of gas-fuelled the galaxies and the central supermassive black hole.” 

[Black hole discovered by the astronomers at European Southern Observatory (ESO). Photo Credit: ESO]

[Quasars that consist of a supermassive black hole and disk of gas termed as "accretion disk." Photo Credit: ESO]

Astronomers examined J1030

At first, the astronomers in Chile and the US examined supermassive blackhole J1030 to crack the mystery about its mammoth sizes. A mysterious filaments of gases led the scientists to the discovery of the spiderweb-like structure. The findings also reveal the components of the "dark matter halos,” and the mystery about what feeds the black holes which could be the cosmic galactic matter like gases, which flows into the invisible spheres of dark matter, eventually into the black hole, scientists found. 

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