Astronomers have discovered a supermassive black hole, LID-568, consuming matter at an incredible rate of over 40 times the theoretical limit. This finding has shed new light on how these cosmic behemoths grew so quickly in the early universe.
The discovery was made using data from the James Webb Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory. The team observed a sample of galaxies from the Chandra X-ray Observatory’s COSMOS legacy survey and identified LID-568 due to its intense x-ray emission.
To determine the exact position of the black hole, the team used the integral field spectrograph on JWST’s NIRSpec, which allowed them to acquire a spectrum for each pixel in the instrument’s field of view. This innovative technique enabled them to get a full view of the target and its surrounding region.
Studying powerful outflows of gas around LID-568 revealed that a large portion of its growth could have occurred in a single episode of rapid accretion. The black hole’s luminosity is higher than theoretically possible, with its rate of consumption exceeding 40 times the Eddington limit.
“This extreme case shows that a fast-feeding mechanism above the Eddington limit is one of the possible explanations for why we see these very heavy black holes so early in the Universe,” said Hyewon Suh, lead astronomer on the project.
Source: https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/news/lid-568-supermassive-black-hole