Researchers Spot Black Hole Eating Stuff At Over 40x the Theoretical Limit

Astronomers have discovered a supermassive black hole in the early Universe devouring matter at over 40 times the Eddington limit. ScienceAlert reports: Led by astronomer Hyewon Suh of Gemini Observatory and NSF's NOIRLab, a team of researchers used JWST to take follow-up observations of a smattering of galaxies identified by the Chandra X-ray Observatory that were bright in X-rays but dim in other wavelengths. When they got to LID-568, they were having trouble identifying its distance across space-time. The galaxy was very faint and very hard to see; but, using the integral field spectrograph on JWST's NIRSpec instrument, the team homed in on the galaxy's exact position. LID-568's far-off location is surprising. Although the object is faint from our position in the Universe, its distance means it must be incredibly intrinsically bright. Detailed observations revealed powerful outflows from the supermassive black hole, a signature of accretion as some of the material is being diverted and blasted into space.

A painstaking analysis of the data revealed that the supermassive black hole is a relatively small one, as supermassive black holes go; just 7.2 million times the mass of the Sun. And the amount of light being produced by the material around the disk was much, much higher than a black hole of this mass should be capable of producing. It suggests an accretion rate some 40 times higher than the Eddington limit. At this rate, the period of super-Eddington accretion should be extremely brief, which means Suh and her team were extremely lucky to catch it in action. And we expect that LID-568 will become a popular observation target for black hole scientists, allowing us a rare glimpse into super-Eddington processes. The research has been published in Nature Astronomy.

Dark Matter

[Roger W Moore]

I'm not an astrophysicist but I'd have thought that Dark Matter would be the obvious way to allow Black Holes to accrete mass rapidly. There is a lot more of it around that ordinary (baryonic) matter and since it does not interact via electromagnetism then light will not exert any pressure on it and there is nothing to counteract gravity.

Re: Dark Matter

[sirv]

There is no dark matter

Re:

[Random361]

Just a few more hours.

Yeah.. Then the riots can begin, no matter who wins.

Re:

[2TecTom]

nothing like a partisan comment to perfectly illustrate the reality of our situation

Left versus right is clearly just divide and conquer while all our political parties are owned and controlled by upper class influences based on campaign contributions and political lobbying.

people, we are being manipulated and exploited

just saying

Re:

[2TecTom]

there are however dark matters. for instance, just look at classism, it's proof positive some people are black holes

Eddington limit?

[little1973]

The Eddington limit is about stars and not about black holes. There is nothing to balance in case of a black hole. Its luminosity depends on the surrounding material, friction and how much is falling into the black hole.

If you don't learn from the past, you're doomed to

[Kelxin]

I would have figured by now, scientists would have at least learned how much they don't know vs trying to quantify how much they do know. Every time someone says "this is a fact about the universe", 10-20 years later they're proven wrong time and time again.

Re:

[iAmWaySmarterThanYou]

Publish or perish.

There aren't that many in the field in an absolute sense who are qualified to to do peer review on anything the others publish.

So lots of stuff gets published. Is accepted as fact. We put up a new telescope or instrument of some sort and are astounded that half of the laws are the universe we made up simply aren't true. Repeat each generation of new scientists.

You'll see the same happen in other fields. Anthropology told us North America was first conixed from Asia about 7k BC. Then 1

Oh dear

[StygianBrood]

It's still less than your mother.