Quasars from the early universe appear to float in voids

Oct. 22 () –

Observations with the James Webb Space Telescope have revealed that some ancient quasars appear to be surprisingly alone in the early universe

MIT researchers used the observatory to travel back in time more than 13 billion years to study the cosmic environment of five known ancient quasars. They found a surprising variety in their neighborhoods, or “quasar fields.” While some quasars reside in highly populated fields with more than 50 neighboring galaxies, as all models predict, the remaining quasars appear to float in voids, with only a few galaxies scattered in their vicinity.

These lone quasars are challenging physicists’ understanding of how these luminous objects could form so early in the universe, without a significant source of surrounding matter to fuel its black hole growth.

“Contrary to previous belief, we found that on average, these quasars are not necessarily in those higher density regions of the early universe. Some of them appear to be located in the middle of nowhere,” he says in a statement Anna-Christina Eilers, associate professor of physics at MIT. “It is difficult to explain how these quasars could grow so large if they appear to have nothing to feed on.”

There is a possibility that these quasars are not as solitary as they appear, but are surrounded by galaxies that are shrouded in dust and therefore hidden from view. Eilers and his colleagues hope to fine-tune their observations to try to see through that cosmic dust, in order to understand how quasars grew so large and so fast in the early universe.

Eilers and his colleagues report their findings in a paper appearing in the Astrophysical Journal.

A quasar is the extremely bright core of a galaxy that houses an active supermassive black hole at its center. As the black hole absorbs surrounding gas and dust, it emits an enormous amount of energy, making quasars some of the brightest objects in the universe. Quasars have been observed as early as a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, and have been a mystery how these objects could become so bright and massive in such a short cosmic time.

The five newly observed quasars are among the oldest quasars observed to date. These objects, which are more than 13 billion years old, are believed to be They formed between 600 and 700 million years after the Big Bang.

The supermassive black holes that power quasars are a billion times more massive than the Sun and more than a trillion times brighter. Because of their extreme luminosity, light from each quasar can travel throughout the age of the universe, long enough to reach JWST’s highly sensitive detectors today.