Overcoming the last “impossible” step in making supermassive black holes
Supermassive black hole growth to such enormous sizes seemed impossible. But the biggest problem is now solved.
At the center of practically every large, massive galaxy in the Universe is the same type of structure: a supermassive black hole. Ranging from a few million solar masses up to tens of billions of solar masses, these astrophysical engines are the most extreme single objects known to humanity. Powering the tremendous jets and ejecta associated with quasars, blazars, and active galactic nuclei, these objects are at least partially responsible for shaping and determining the fates of the host galaxies that they’re a part of.
But how are these extreme objects made? We have a very simple and straightforward story for the creation of the “other” major class of black holes: stellar mass black holes. When a large, massive star reaches the end of its life, it can die in either a core-collapse supernova or can directly collapse in its entirety: giving rise to a black hole of tens or, quite possibly, hundreds of masses. But how do we get them to grow to be billions of solar masses in heft, particularly so early on in the history of the Universe, where the earliest quasars show that they were this huge very early on? For a…
