Scientists continue to unravel the mystery of supermassive black holes, which are observed in the Universe much earlier than they should be, given current understanding of astrophysics. One possible explanation is that they formed from primordial singularities that evolved very quickly after the birth of the universe.
Mystery of supermassive black holes
Primordial black holes that formed in the early universe could have grown very quickly to supermassive sizes. Scientists made this assumption in an attempt to explain how monsters existing at the center of every large galaxy were able to grow so quickly to their colossal sizes.
In the modern universe, black holes are formed mainly as a result of supernova explosions at the final stage of the evolution of massive stars. At the same time, their initial mass usually does not exceed several dozen solar masses. At the same time, objects have been discovered in the centers of galaxies whose mass exceeds that of the sun by billions of times. Such supermassive black holes could only have formed through the merger of less massive objects and the prolonged absorption of surrounding matter.
However, this takes time. Theoretically, supermassive black holes should begin to appear after the first billion years of the universe’s existence. However, the James Webb Space Telescope showed that they existed in galaxies long before that. It saw the earliest known CEERS 1019 as it was when the universe was only 570 million years old, and even then it was 9 million times more massive than our sun.
And stars still need to evolve in order to turn into black holes. And they appeared only several hundred million years after the Big Bang. So where did supermassive black holes come from? In an attempt to explain this, scientists have put forward many bold theories, one of which is related to their primordial “relatives.”
Primordial black holes
There is a theory that, a few seconds after the Big Bang, conditions existed in the universe in which black holes could be created simply from fluctuations in space itself. These are called primordial. If they really existed, they were the first large objects in the universe and they really had plenty of time to evolve into real monsters.
The question is just how big they really were. The general consensus is that they had no lower mass limit, meaning they could weigh as much as Earth or as little as a human being. However, in a new study, scientists recalled that there was no upper limit to their mass either. Therefore, they considered a situation in which, at the very beginning of the universe’s existence, they were formed in a mass range from 1/100,000 to 100,000 solar masses.
Modeling has shown that such a scenario could indeed explain how supermassive black holes could have grown to such large sizes so quickly. But under one condition. They had to be located where there was a lot of matter to absorb, i.e., in the centers of galaxies.
And for the primordial black hole to be at the center of the galaxy, there must be a lot of them. The only problem is that no one has ever seen a primordial black hole. But if they exist, they will certainly be found. Their distinguishing feature will be their mass, which is at least three times less than that of the Sun.
According to www.space.com
