Observations of the energy output and variability timescales of quasars revealed that they radiate over a trillion times as much energy as our Sun from a region about the size of the Solar System. Black holes are a class of astronomical objects that have undergone gravitational collapse, leaving behind spheroidal regions of space from which nothing can escape, not even light. These large regions of invisible 'dark matter' are thought to attract huge amounts of gas in the early Universe. Generally, supermassive black holes are just what their name says: really, really massive black holes. Marco Mignoli, astronomer from INAF, and study lead author, said the research was driven by the desire to understand supermassive black holes in the early universe. They measure in the hundreds of thousands of solar masses (one solar mass equals the mass of the Sun) up to billions of solar masses. Researchers from the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) say this is the first time such a close grouping has been seen so soon after the universe began. Connect with friends faster than ever with the new Facebook app. 'Streams of gas - available to fuel both the galaxies and the central supermassive black hole – can flow along the filaments.'. For many years, astronomers had only indirect evidence for supermassive black holes, the most compelling of which was the existence of quasars in remote active galaxies. Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, COSMOS - The SAO Encyclopedia of Astronomy, Study Astronomy Online at Swinburne University. It is thought the first black holes must have grown very fast to reach masses of a billion suns within the first 900 million years of the universe's life. Supermassive black holes are exotic, strange and relatively common cosmic phenomena - they appear at the centre of most galaxies including the Milky Way. The high orbital velocities of these stars and gas are easily explained if they are being accelerated by a massive object with a strong gravitational field that is contained within a small region of space – i.e. Together, the gas and the invisible dark matter form the web-like structures where galaxies and black holes can evolve and allow a black hole to become supermassive. Astronomers are still not sure how these supermassive black holes form. a supermassive black hole. The observations of the galaxies surrounding the supermassive black hole were made by the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT). Whatever their formation mechanism, most astronomers agree that accretion of material onto the supermassive black hole drives both active galactic nuclei and galactic jets. The only mechanism capable of producing such enormous amounts of energy is the conversion of gravitational energy into light by a massive black hole. 'We believe we have just seen the tip of the iceberg, and that the few galaxies discovered so far around this supermassive black hole are only the brightest ones,' said co-author Barbara Balmaverde, an astronomer at INAF in Torino, Italy. For many years, astronomers had only indirect evidence for supermassive black holes, the most compelling of which was the existence of quasars in remote active galaxies. Together, the gas and the invisible dark matter form the web-like structures where galaxies and black holes can evolve and allow a black hole to become supermassive. All of the galaxies surrounding the black hole were lying in a cosmic 'spider's web' of gas extending to more than 300 times the size of the Milky Way. As the name suggests, supermassive black holes contain between a million and a billion times more mass than a typical stellar black hole. Millennials used to like democracy. Black holes emerging in the earliest years of the universe are thought to have formed from the collapse of the first stars - but until now astronomers didn't know how they were able to grow so big - up to the size of a billion Suns - so quickly. The team behind this new study predict that it could be down to dark matter halos. 'The absence of earlier detections of such structures was likely due to observational limitations,' Norman explained. Now, most don't trust it, a Cambridge study suggests. Half a dozen galaxies entangled in the gravitational web of a supermassive black hole, less than a billion years after the Big Bang, have been spotted by astronomers. The jet emitted by the galaxy M87 is thought to be powered by a supermassive black hole at the galaxy’s centre. The galaxies spotted inside the web are some of the faintest current telescopes - Earth or space-based - are able to spot. The Milky Way galaxy hosts a supermassive black hole (SMBH) at its center, Sagittarius A, with about four million solar-masses. 'These are extreme systems and to date we have had no good explanation for their existence,' the Italian researcher explained. A supermassive black hole (SMBH or sometimes SBH) is the largest type of black hole, with mass on the order of millions to billions of times the mass of the Sun (M☉). Although there are only a handful of confirmed supermassive black holes (most are too far away to be observed), they are thought to exist at the centre of most large galaxies, including the centre of our own galaxy, the Milky Way. Stellar black holes result from the collapse of massive stars, and some have suggested that supermassive black holes form out of the collapse of massive clouds of gas during the early stages of the formation of the galaxy. 'The cosmic web filaments are like spider's web threads,' said Mignoli, adding the 'galaxies stand and grow where the filaments cross'. Yet another, is that a cluster of stellar black holes form and eventually merge into a supermassive black hole. Observational evidence indicates that almost every large galaxy has a supermassive black hole at the galaxy's center. British supermarket chain launches frozen chicken nugget into space to celebrate anniversary, Astronomers discover a supermassive black hole with six galaxies. Colin Norman of Johns Hopkins University in the US, also a co-author on the study, said the discovery adds support to the theory that supermassive black holes form and grow within massive dark matter halos in large-scale web-like structures. More recently, direct evidence for the existence of supermassive black holes has come from observations of material orbiting the centres of galaxies. Study Astronomy Online at Swinburne University It was made using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile - but larger telescopes are needed to find even fainter objects. Like us on Facebook to see similar stories. Show full articles without "Continue Reading" button for {0} hours. The discovery helped fill in part of the puzzle of how these relatively abundant but extreme objects formed so quickly after the Big Bang, the team said. Finding this tangled web of galaxies 'feeding' an early supermassive black hole suggests they grow in web-like structures which contain plenty of gas to fuel them. All material is © Swinburne University of Technology except where indicated. The findings have been published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics. Further evidence of a supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy has been found. Observations of the energy output and variability timescales of quasars revealed that they radiate over a trillion times as much energy as our Sun from a region about the size of the Solar System. Another idea is that a stellar black hole consumes enormous amounts of material over millions of years, growing to supermassive black hole proportions. Astronomers have struggled to explain how sufficiently large amounts of 'black hole fuel' could have been available to enable these objects to grow so quickly. The Milky Way has a supermassive black hole in its Galac… The light from this large web-like structure, with its black hole of one billion solar masses, has travelled to Earth from when the universe was 900 million years old.

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