Welsh researcher part of breakthrough study on supermassive black hole formation

Amelia Jones

A Welsh researcher has played a key role in a major international study that sheds new light on how supermassive black holes formed in the early universe.

The findings published in the leading scientific journal Nature Astronomy, address a long-standing mystery in astrophysics.

The research, led by scientists at Maynooth University in Ireland, included Dr Lewis Prole, a Welsh astrophysicist who completed his PhD at Cardiff University and is now a postdoctoral researcher at Manynooth.

Astronomers have long struggled to explain how supermassive black holes could already exist less than a billion years after the universe began, as observed by the James Webb Space Telescope.

The new research suggests the answer lies in the extreme conditions of the early universe.

Dense, gas-rich young galaxies created an environment in which small black holes, formed from the deaths of the first stars, were able to grow at exceptional rates.

Lead author Daxal Mehta, a PhD candidate at Maynooth University, said: “We found that the chaotic conditions that existed in the early universe triggered early, smaller black holes to grow into the super-massive black holes we see later following a feeding frenzy which devoured material all around them.”

He added: “We revealed, using state-of-the-art computer simulations, that the first generation of black holes – those born just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang – grew incredibly fast, into tens of thousands of times the size of our Sun.”

The simulations show that these black holes underwent short bursts of so-called super-Eddington accretion, during which they consumed surrounding material faster than standard theoretical limits would normally allow.

Dr Prole said the findings address a major theoretical challenge raised by recent observations.

He said: “This breakthrough unlocks one of astronomy’s big puzzles.”

The study also challenges the widely held view that rare, massive “heavy seed” black holes were required to explain early supermassive black holes. Instead, it suggests that more common stellar-mass black holes could grow rapidly under the right conditions.

Mehta added: “What we have shown here is that these early black holes, while small, are capable of growing spectacularly fast, given the right conditions.”

According to research group leader Dr John Regan, the findings point to a much more turbulent early universe than previously assumed.

The work may also inform future observations by the European Space Agency-NASA Laser Interferometer Space Antenna mission, scheduled for launch in 2035.

You can read more about the research here.