Scientist discover unique supermassive black hole with six surrounding galaxies

Astronomers have found at least six galaxies around a supermassive black hole in a form of a “spider’s web” of gas extending to more than 300 times the Milky Way. Calling it a “gigantic cosmic structure”, a research paper published by the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF), Bologna, the galaxies were already present when the universe was less than a billion years old.

Discovered by a team of astronomers at the National Insitute of Astrophysics with observations made on ESO's Very large telescope (Vlt) and the Large binocular telescope (Lbt), it is the ‘first’ time that such a structure has been observed in the remote era of the cosmos. This discovery will further help scientists understand the formation of supermassive black holes along with the extraordinary speed with which these objects increase in mass. 

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Explains 'birth and growth' of Black Holes

Marco Mignoli from INAF has said that to date, experts do not have a complete explanation of the “birth and growth” of black holes. He also said that the large quantities of the gas flow inside the galaxies are not only feeding the galaxies but ‘probably’ also the supermassive black hole. 

"We can think of the gas clusters present in this structure as the threads of a giant spider's web", explains Mignoli. “Galaxies are found and evolve where these filaments cross. Large quantities of gas flow inside them, feeding both the galaxies themselves and probably the supermassive black hole at the centre of this structure.”

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The light from this large web-like “black hole- dominated structure with an estimated mass of one billion times that of the Sun”, has travelled to Earth from a time when the universe was only 900 million years old. Roberto Gilli, also an astronomer at INAF, Bologna and co-author of the study published in the Astronomy and Astrophysics journal, has explained that their work is an “important piece” to a still incomplete puzzle that describes the formation and evolving of extreme celestial objects. 

As per the study, the newly discovered six galaxies can be explained by saying that the large amounts of gas they contain, provide the fuel that the central black hole requires in order to rapidly become supermassive.

'Our discovery supports the idea that more distant and massive black holes form and grow within massive dark matter halos within large-scale structures, and that the lack of previous sightings of such structures was likely due to observational limits,” says  Roberto Decarli.

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