Most Distant Black Hole Discovered: 13 Billion Light-Years Away!

[Astronuc]

Most Distant Black Hole Discovered
http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20070607/sc_space/mostdistantblackholediscovered

The most distant black hole ever found is nearly 13 billion light-years from Earth, astronomers announced today.

The Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope spotted the bright burst of light the black hole created as it sucked up nearby gas, heating it and causing it to glow very brightly in what's known as a quasar.

The distance to the quasar, which sits in the constellation Pisces, was determined by measuring the amount of redshift in the lines of the quasar's spectrum, or prism of light. Because light is "redshifted" to longer wavelengths as an object moves away from an observer, the higher the redshift, the further away the object is-and this quasar had quite a large redshift.

"As soon as I saw the spectrum with its booming emission line, I knew this one was a long way away," said team member Chris Willott of the University of Ottawa.

Because the Big Bang is believed to have occurred around 13.7 billion years ago, astronomers are seeing the quasar as it appeared a mere 1 billion years after the Big Bang, which gives them a unique view into universe's past.

 

[neutrino]

Hit it, turbo!

 

[Hymne]

Thanks for the reading.
Very interesting, this would also, of course, mean that its the earliest observed black hole in the history of the universe.
Does this in any way confirm or disapprove todays cosmology?
How early does we expect that the first black holes formed, cause we expect the universe to begin wothout these gravitational collapsed objects right?

 

[smallphi]

How much of the statement that 'quasars are black holes' is actualy theory, experiment or plain speculation?

 

[Garth]

How much of the statement that 'quasars are black holes' is actualy theory, experiment or plain speculation?

The engine of a quasar/QSO (Quasi-Stellar Object) is thought to be a BH with an accretion disk around it. The material in the disk spirals into the event horizon and doing so is heated by frictional forces so that it radiates strongly. If hot and dense enough the disk may ignite with nuclear fusion.

In quasars (Quasi-Stellar Radio Objects) jets are ejected along the polar axes and these many thousands of parsecs out excite vast radio lobes.

All this is detailed theory, which fits observed quasar characteristics, however there does not seem to another viable possibility on the block...

Garth

 

[Chronos]

It is a compelling theory that makes sense in a BB universe, where distant [young] objects exhibit characteristics not observered in the local [ancient] universe. Perhaps all galaxies followed a similar evolutionary path. The evidence, in that case, should be 'out there'.

 

[Voltage]

I see the estimate of 500 million times the mass of the sun. Is there any evidence of any surrounding galaxy? I was reading here that the first galaxies were maybe 400 to 900 million years after the big bang so there was time enough. I'm interested in any signs of black holes getting kicked out of galaxies.

 

[ray b]

I don't see a single BH as the QUASAR
but a group of two or more BH comming together
to form a super massive BH as there must be a process to make these

as they move around each other in a disk of junk
that each is draging in towards them
the holes eating each others disks could provide enuff stuff to power the QUASAR as even small motions will cause far more stuff to infall then a static single hole will eat

once the massive BH forms the QUASAR is over
so a QUASAR is a forming massive BH

 

[turbo]

Hit it, turbo!

I have been holding off, waiting for the the Space Telescope Science Institutes video lectures to come back on line so I could link the relevant talk. They are still not back on line. To summarize: in November of 2005 (so you all can find it when their videos come back on line) Michael Strauss (the science spokesperson for the SDSS team) gave an impressive presentation. Key points of the presentation include the findings that although quasars were expected to evolve in metallicity the more distant (younger) they are, there is absolutely no evolution in either relative or absolute abundances of metals all the way to redshift z~6.5. There is also no evolution in any other quality that the SDSS team could measure. Quasars at z~6.5 are just like those at lower redshifts and they exhibit solar or super-solar metallicities. Strauss made this point very explicitly. Next, if quasars are at the distances implied by a strict Hubble-flow interpretation of their redshifts, the inverse-square relation of distance to luminosity requires that they be ultra-luminous and must be powered by black holes of a billion solar masses or more and must be feeding on host galaxies of a trillion solar masses or more. As Dr. Strauss pointed out, no theorist has come up with a plausible idea for how these extremely massive, highly-metallized objects could have formed only a few hundred million years after the BB. These observations demand a re-assessment of BB/hierarchical structure formation, since they cannot currently be explained under that model.

We are at a historical era in which observations are outstripping theory and in which theory must be revisited with a critical eye. Here is the link to the page of links in which Strauss' talk is featured, in case STSI ever gets their videos back on line:
http://www.stsci.edu/institute/center/information/streaming/archive/STScIScienceColloquiaFall2005/

 

[Voltage]

Thanks again turbo.

 

[Garth]

This may be another example of an age problem in the Early Universe.

In the standard model with a universe age of 1 Gyr. the object would be seen at around z = 6. (I don't see the actual red shift in any of the links, does anybody know better?)

Is this actually the most distant quasar seen? A Survey of z>5.7 Quasars in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey II: Discovery of Three Additional Quasars at z>6.

We present the discovery of three new quasars at z>6 in 1300 deg^2 of SDSS imaging data, J114816.64+525150.3 (z=6.43), J104845.05+463718.3 (z=6.23) and J163033.90+401209.6 (z=6.05).

Now z= 6.43 for quasar J114816.64+525150.3 would correspond to a universe age of 0.869 Gyr.

The OP quasar might possibly be the most luminous from that epoch.

In a strictly linearly expanding scenario this red shift corresponds to an age after BB of about 2 Gyr.

If acceleration were around at that epoch then the universe age at those red shifts could be higher, maybe much higher.

Garth

 

[Chronos]

I do not see how any of this poses an age problem for the universe, Garth [wrt physics as usual]. Metallicity is not compelling. We already knew there was a metallicity problem. That finding does not drown the baby.

 

[Garth]

I do not see how any of this poses an age problem for the universe, Garth [wrt physics as usual]. Metallicity is not compelling. We already knew there was a metallicity problem. That finding does not drown the baby.

Here I wasn't thinking about metallicity, although that is a problem with quasar APM 08279+5255.

But how do you get a mass of 5 x 10⁸M_Solar to condense in under 1 Gyr from the homogeneous ~10^-5 background at the Surface of Last Scattering? In simulations of large structure formation with ~23% DM the largest masses condense after about 10 Gyrs.

Garth

 

[Wallace]

In structure growth theory, the smallest scales 'go non-linear', meaning they rapidly undergo a runaway collapse, before larger scales. Therefore we expect that small objects, and you would agree that black holes are small, will form before larger mass conglomerates, such as galaxies and clusters. Black holes can be massive, but they are tiny compared to clusters, which take longer to form. Scale rather than mass is the important factor here.

That being said I'm not certain when LCDM structure formation does expect BH formation to begin. I'll see if I can find anything. Anyone else have a reference?

 

[George Jones]

This thread provides provides a good excuse to talk about some different defintions of cosmological distance. In relativity in general, and cosmology in particular, there are dfifferent definitions of distance, and these different definitions, when applied to the same situation, give different values.

The distance given in the article is look-back distance. The light from the stuff around the black hole that we see now started its trip 13 billion years ago, and since light travels at the constant speed of 1 light-year per year, the black hole is at a (look-back) distance of 13 billion light-years from us.

The distance between the black hole and us could also be defined to be the spatial separation at a particular instant in time. Because the universe is expanding, this definition depends on which instant in time is used. Two obious choices are "then", the instant in time when the light started its trip, and "now", the instant in time when the light reaches us.

Using Ned Wright's cosmological calculator, I find that the distance between us and the black hole then was 4 billion light-years, and now is 27 billion light-years.