Supermassive black holes, called quasars, that are centered in massive galaxies are the most resplendent celestial objects, according to a press release by Carnegie Institution for Science (CIS), a non-profit scientific research institute in Washington, D.C. A team of researchers from around the globe, including Yuri Beletsky from Carnegie, discovered the brightest quasar ever found. The discovery is published in the Feb. 26 issue of the journal Nature.
"This quasar is a unique laboratory to study the way that a quasar's black hole and host galaxy co-evolve," Beletsky said, according to the press release from Carnegie. "Our findings indicate that in the early universe, quasar black holes probably grew faster than their host galaxies, although more research is needed to confirm this idea."
A quasar forms when a bight cloud of material is sucked up by a black hole. As the particles speed up when approaching the black hole, they heat up, causing an extremely bright light that pushes away material behind it. This process, called radiation pressure, typically stunts black hole growth.
"However this black hole at the centre of the quasar gained enormous mass in a short period of time," Bian said, according to ANU's press release.
SDSS J0100+2802 was chosen from more than 500 million objects in the northern skies because of its unique red color. Bian said he hopes that more surprises lay ahead when the Skymapper survey turns to the southern skies.
"Skymapper will find more of these exciting objects. Because they are so luminous we can see further back in time and can use them to explore the early universe," Bian said, according to the press release.
Additional co-authors on the paper include Feige Wang, Jinyi Yang, and Qian Yang, also of Peking University and the Kavli Institute; Xiaohui Fan of University of Arizona and the Kavli Institute; Weimin Yi of the Chinese Academy of Sciences; Wenwen Zuo of Peking University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences; Linhua Jiang and RanWang of the Kavli Institute; and Ian D. McGreer and David Thompson of University of Arizona.
This work was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), the Strategic Priority Research Program "The Emergence of Cosmological Structures" of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the National Key Basic Research Program of China, and the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), according to the press release from Carnegie.
