Supermassive black holes bent the laws of physics to grow to monstrous sizes

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"The results we are obtaining are truly unexpected, and all point to a super Eddington-type growth mechanism for black holes. I would say we hit the jackpot!"

A orange disk emiting white smoke across its plane with a black orb at its center
A feeding supermassive black hole surrounded by a glowing disk of gas and dust. (Image credit: Emanuela Tortosa)

Scientists have found evidence that black holes that existed less than 1 billion years after the Big Bang may have defied the laws of physics to grow to monstrous sizes. The discovery could solve one of the most pressing mysteries in space science: How did supermassive black holes in the early universe grow so big, so fast?

Supermassive black holes with masses millions, or even billions, of times that of the sun are found at the hearts of all large galaxies. They are thought to grow from a chain of mergers between progressively larger black holes, as well as sometimes through feeding on matter that surrounds them. Such feeding supermassive black holes cause the material that surrounds them (in flattened clouds called "accretion disks") to glow so brightly they are seen at vast distances. Such bright objects are referred to as "quasars" and can outshine the combined light of every star in the galaxies they live in. 

However, the processes that allow black holes to reach "supermassive status" are thought to occur on timescales greater than 1 billion years or so — that means seeing supermassive black hole-powered quasars 500 million years or so after the Big Bang, as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has been doing, constitutes a massive problem (or a supermassive one even?) for scientists to tackle.

To crack this mystery, a team of researchers used the XMM-Newton and Chandra space telescopes to examine 21 of the earliest quasars ever discovered in X-ray light. What they found was that these supermassive black holes, which would have formed during an early universal epoch called the "cosmic dawn" could have rapidly grown to monstrous masses via bursts of intense feeding, or "accretion."

The findings could ultimately explain how supermassive black holes existed as quasars in the early universe.

"Our work suggests that the supermassive black holes at the centers of the first quasars that formed in the first billion years of the universe may actually have increased their mass very quickly, defying the limits of physics," Alessia Tortosa, who led the research and is a scientists at the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF), said in a statement.

The rapid feeding that these early supermassive black holes seemed to have indulged in is considered law-bending because of a rule called the "Eddington limit."

The answer is blowing in the wind

The Eddington limit says that, for any body in space that is accreting matter, there is a maximum luminosity that can be reached before the radiation pressure of the light generated overcomes gravity and forces material away, stopping that material from falling into the accreting body.

In other words, a rapidly feasting black hole should generate so much light from its surroundings that it cuts off its own food supply and halts its own growth. 

This team's findings suggest that the Eddington limit can be defined, and supermassive black holes could enter a phase of "super-Eddington accretion." Evidence for this result came from a link between the shape of the X-ray spectrum emitted by these quasars and the speeds of powerful winds of matter that blow from them, which can reach thousands of miles per second.

An illustration shows powerful winds of matter flowing from an early supermassive black hole. (Image credit: Roberto Molar Candanosa/Johns Hopkins University)

That link suggested a connection between quasar wind speeds and the temperature of X-ray-emitting gas located closest to the central black hole associated with that particular quasar. Quasars with low-energy X-ray emission, and thus cooler gas, seemed to have faster-moving winds. High-energy X-ray quasars, on the other hand, seemed to have slower-moving winds.

Because the temperature of gas close to the black hole is linked to the mechanisms that allow it to accrete matter, this situation suggested a super-Eddington phase for supermassive black holes during which they intensely feed and, thus, rapidly grow. That could explain how supermassive black holes came to exist in the early universe before the cosmos was 1 billion years old.

"The discovery of this link between X-ray emission and winds is crucial to understanding how such large black holes formed in such a short time, thus offering a concrete clue to solving one of the greatest mysteries of modern astrophysics," Tortosa said.

Related Stories:

— Did dark matter help black holes grow to monster sizes in the infant cosmos?

—  Colliding black holes could hide in the light of superbright quasars 

—  2 merging supermassive black holes spotted at 'cosmic noon' in early universe

The XMM-Newton data used by the team was collected between 2021 and 2023 as part of the Multi-Year XMM-Newton Heritage Programme, directed by INAF researcher Luca Zappacosta, and the HYPERION project, which aims to study hyperluminous quasars at the cosmic dawn of the universe.

"For the HYPERION program, we focused on two key factors: on the one hand, the careful choice of quasars to observe, selecting titans, that is, those that had accumulated the greatest possible mass, and on the other, the in-depth study of their properties in X-rays, never attempted before on so many objects at the cosmic dawn," Zappacosta said in the statement. "The results we are obtaining are truly unexpected, and all point to a super Eddington-type growth mechanism for black holes. 

"I would say we hit the jackpot!"

The team's research was published on Wednesday (Nov. 20) in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

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Robert Lea
Robert Lea
Senior Writer

Robert Lea is a science journalist in the U.K. whose articles have been published in Physics World, New Scientist, Astronomy Magazine, All About Space, Newsweek and ZME Science. He also writes about science communication for Elsevier and the European Journal of Physics. Rob holds a bachelor of science degree in physics and astronomy from the U.K.’s Open University. Follow him on Twitter @sciencef1rst.

4 Comments Comment from the forums
  • contrarian
    There are alternative means by which SMBHs can form, and not just by "a chain of mergers between progressively larger black holes"

    These folks seem to neglect a potential route to BH formation, which is "direct collapse" (DC) to form primordial black holes before stars even formed. BHs from this mechanism could have been the initial source of SMBHs, or at least their starting point. They would be the seeds of galaxy formation, and grow by the accretion mechanism as noted.

    This DC route is also suggested as the source of dark matter, where DC can form black holes of various sizes. This concept is suggested in numerous studies so it is not as hair-brained as some might suggest.
    Reply
  • jhixon
    Biggest mystery in space is why black holes violate the laws of gravity by pushing on a galaxy and instead of being pushed the same direction as Newton's Laws say, we observe the reverse. You might start there......
    Reply
  • contrarian
    How does this relate to the formation of supermassive black holes?

    You offer a suggestion about black holes in galaxies, but nothing on their formation.
    Reply
  • jhixon
    contrarian said:
    How does this relate to the formation of supermassive black holes?

    You offer a suggestion about black holes in galaxies, but nothing on their formation.

    How does black holes form?

    First, we must explore all mechanisms that make black holes different than what we observe in our solar system with “normal gravity”. Black holes gravity is working in reverse of Newton’s Laws. We know this for a fact because we observe a black hole pushing on a galaxy, and “normal gravity” says that a force pushing should be pushed away, and it pulls back into the black hole. Based on source 1, scientists created negative mass, measured it and see the reverse gravity in action with their own eyes, and this negative mass exists in sound waves (source 5) and lights waves (source 8) naturally in our universe. Second, we look at the arch extending in an upwards trajectory over the accretion disk (see source 2). This is why the arch extends upward, which is against “normal gravity” as normal gravity pulls everything down so if this were in a positive EM field, then the arch would extend under the accretion disk. So these three things (gravity of black hole in reverse, creating negative mass and observing this behavior, seeing the trajectory of the arch extend up against normal gravity show us that it’s negative mass that is causing the reverse gravity in “spooky action”. Negative mass creates a negative EM field which causes gravity to work in reverse and until enough negative mass is collected it’s just clouds of negative mass in negative EM fields and electrons that don’t give off any light because photons are absorb, so you only see the negative EM field because the change in charges cause the positive EM field to give off photons so we see dark matter or really negative EM fields holding electrons dark, however the negative mass has not grown strong enough to create conditions for a black hole to occur. See source 6, which explains that two Neutron stars are made from negative mass with a negative EM field. In the case of a neutron star, the body of a star collapses from losing all of the electrons so matter falls until collision, at which point the Higgs field appears and if it’s under the influence of positive energy it becomes just a collapsed star, but if the field is negative it then becomes a neutron star.

    We know this because when the two Neutron stars collided into each other, which is the reverse that gravity works. Example the moon is being pushed by Earth's gravity, but yearly it is getting further away from Earth. This is normal gravity and it does not apply to the actions we see. This takes the size of the negative mass to reach a point when negative EM field is so strong that a black hole is created, which is exactly what happened when two Neutron stars collided, in a negative EM field causes enough negative mass to create a black hole. We seen this happen with our instruments, and this makes perfect sense based on what we see and that we saw a black hole created. So this clearly explains the formation of black holes.

    Your last question about Super Massive Black holes is the mechanism that breaks matter down at a huge pace which clearly goes to expansion and contraction of space. Matter in tiny particles has a very weak EM field, so at some point when enough matter is broken down, the negative mass/negative EM field will contract space. This is explained in my article. Hope this helps....
    Reply