Black Holes Not New

New information has been found recently that sheds a little more light on what the universe was like in its infancy. It is well-known that most astronomers and physicists believe that black holes reside at the center of most, if not all, galaxies, including our own Milky Way. The question has always been, when did the black holes form? Were they always there, since the beginning or did they come later?

The new evidence comes from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, MA where the data of the Submillimeter Array of eight radio antennas in Hawaii was analyzed. The images were of a galaxy studied long ago, known as 4C60.07. It was originally detected because of the bright emissions of the quasar, a rapidly spinning black hole consuming its home galaxy, at the center.

Because of the emissions, it was originally thought that the Hydrogen gasses surrounding the black hole were producing new stars at the ungodly rate of 5,000 per year. Now, however, with the new data, it can be seen that galaxy 4C60.07 is actually much, much older than originally suspected and the stars are not new at all, but rather close to death.

The activity that was originally noticed is not coming from 4C60.07 at all, but from another, much newer galaxy in the midst of a collision with 4C60.07. The new galaxy also has a massive black hole at its center and in fact they are feeding off each other's gasses, creating an umbilical link between the two black holes.

From this data it is determined that the images reaching us now are over 12 billion years old and shows us that black holes were common in the centers of galaxies even so long ago. Rob Ivison, lead author of the study that will be published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society on the subject was quoted in the CfA press release as saying, "Remarkably, both galaxies contain supermassive black holes at their centers, each capable of powering a billion, billion, billion, light bulbs. The implications are wide-reaching: you can't help wondering how many other colossal black holes may be lurking unseen in th distant universe."

Black holes have been one of the most studied and marveled at phenomena of space and astronomy. In short, a black hole is an object of zero volume, but infinite density, thought to be created when an old star collapses in upon itself. This point of infinite density without volume is called a singularity and in known for having a gravitational pull so strong that even light cannot escape.

Sources:

David Aguilar, "Colossal Black Holes Common in the Early Universe", CfA

The Imagine Team, "Black Holes", NASA Goddard Space Flight Center