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Researchers Spot Black Hole Eating Stuff At Over 40x the Theoretical Limit (sciencealert.com) 179

Posted by BeauHD from the would-you-look-at-that dept.
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.
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Researchers Spot Black Hole Eating Stuff At Over 40x the Theoretical Limit More

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

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  • 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 (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Rei ( 128717 ) on Tuesday November 05, 2024 @06:06AM (#64920745) Homepage

      Dark matter is more diffuse than baryonic matter due to its more limited means of interaction and losing energy, so does not seem like a good candidate for rapid growth. Also, what dark matter has to counteract gravity is what everything does: its momentum. It's not going to just suddenly head into a black hole just because one happens to be in the neighborhood; dark matter without an intersecting trajectory, same as baryonic matter, would have to be quite close to be fated to inspiral (there exist stable circular orbits outside of ~3x the Schwarzschild radius). And dark matter's inability to lose energy through electromagnetic radiation is a disadvantage, not an advantage, to accretion in black holes, because to get close enough, without an unlucky trajectory, you need to bleed off energy such as through interactions with other particles, something dark matter is specifically notable for not being good at.

      • Dark matter is more diffuse than baryonic matter due to its more limited means of interaction and losing energy, so does not seem like a good candidate for rapid growth.

        Good point; dark matter is nonluminous (that's right in the name!), so it seems a poor candidate for explaining an accretion disk that is too luminous.

        The post you're replying to suggests dark energy, but I don't know of any proposed concept of dark energy that could enhance the luminosity of an accretion disk without increasing the rate at which the accretion disk is blown away.

  • Eddington limit? (Score:4, Informative)

    by little1973 ( 467075 ) on Tuesday November 05, 2024 @02:31AM (#64920475)

    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.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tx ( 96709 )

      There is nothing to balance in case of a black hole

      Yes, there is. The accretion disk of a growing black hole emits light, and it is the radiation pressure of that light that determines the point at which the black hole eventually stops growing - that radiation pressure reaches a point where it prevents any further matter from getting close enough to the black hole to be accreted. So the Eddington Luminosity absolutely applies to an actively growing black hole.

      • The Eddington limit indeed was formulated for a star in hydrostatic equilibrium. An accretion disk around a black hole has much more complicated mechanics of how matter reaches the black hole and how radiation is emitted from the accretion disk outside the event horizon.

        Accretion disks, whether from supermassive black holes or from the formation of stars through a gravitational collapse of tenuous material in a nebula, exhibit polar outflows, the mechanisms of which are not fully understood but hypothes

        • ... Then there is something called "relativistic beaming." A black hole accretion disk can blast out polar outflows at relativistic speeds, emitting radiation in a narrow beam. If the beam just happens to be pointed in our direction, this can result in extremely high apparent luminosity. This is kind of like a narrow-beam LED flashlight being pointed at your face.

          This is indeed a reasonable explanation, and pretty much all such ultra-high-radiance sources feature beaming. It would be my first thought.

          It is so well known a phenomenon, though, that I can't see that it could have not been discussed. But I'm too busy to dig up the original papers to see if it was discussed.

  • If you don't learn from the past, you're doomed to (Score:3)

    by Kelxin ( 3417093 ) on Tuesday November 05, 2024 @02:45AM (#64920489)
    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.

    • 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

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Kokuyo ( 549451 )

        Given that science these days (and probably at every point in existence of humans) isn't a sacred, 100% dependable source of facts...

        How do I counter flat earthers at this point? Or anti-vaxxers. Being an autist, I am forced to be rather overly precise when using phrases like "we know".

        Yes, I'm pretty sure that the earth is round and I'm pretty sure quite a few of the experiments to prove it are correct. But if they ask me "Can you be one hundred percent certain?" I'll always have to say "Well, no".

        Yes, it

        • Re:If you don't learn from the past, you're doomed (Score:5, Insightful)

          by bleedingobvious ( 6265230 ) on Tuesday November 05, 2024 @05:10AM (#64920669)

          But if they ask me "Can you be one hundred percent certain?" I'll always have to say "Well, no".

          Terrible example. We are 100% certain about the shape of the planet. There is ZERO chance of being wrong here. None. It is sort of slightly oval but mostly round.

          We are not 100% certain where detection, observation and reproduction are difficult. Here we rely on multiple, overlapping, data to test the current prevailing hypothesis to abstraction. If we continually fail to disprove - and that is actually the whole point behind the scientific method - the hypothesis then we accept that it is very likely true and it becomes a foundational theory upon which we proceed to build.

          We can't observe gravity. We can't trap it in a net and pull it apart. We can, however - to an abolute certainty - measure and predict its effects. Does it exist? Is it actually something called nurpin which functions through some heretofore undiscovered mechanism? Possibly. Does that stop us from exploiting it? Not one jot.

          The great thing about science is we progress regardless. If the theory remains true, fantastic. If it's proven false, we've resolved some ignorance and we've progressed our understanding. Also fantastic.

          Science reporting, however, requires engagement and using words like "maybe" or "possibly" or "likely" confuses and angers the ignorant masses.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Kokuyo ( 549451 )

            I don't think you understand why I struggle.

            _I_ have not been to the ISS and seen the earth. And even if I was, I could have been drugged and hallucinated.

            Probability is a completely different beast of course. Yes, I am sure enough that the earth is round that I will depend on it being a fact in everyday life. But I am completely incapable of verifying all the evidence myself so I must rely on others to do it.

            And whether I think it plausible that those people are lying depends a great deal on how dependable

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by sconeu ( 64226 )

              Go watch a sailing ship sink below the horizon. On a flat earth, that would not happen. On a round earth, you get what you see. The lower parts go below the horizon, until on the tips of the mast remain, and then they go below it as well.

              Now you can see evidence for yourself.

              • Go watch a sailing ship sink below the horizon.

                Light propagation near the horizon is not in straight lines, due to refraction. In fact, when the sun sets visually, it's actually 3/4 of a degree below the horizon. And refractive light bending can be either downward or up (the reason for mirages) depending on the near-surface temperature gradient. So this is too complicated to be a good test, you have to rule out the effects of refraction.

                Time zones, however-- there is no way to explain how sunset in London can be sunrise in California if the Earth is fl

            • I don't think you understand why I struggle. _I_ have not been to the ISS and seen the earth. And even if I was, I could have been drugged and hallucinated.

              No, but I have had to adjust my watch when I've travelled across different time zones. I've had phone calls with friends on the East coast telling me it's hours after sunset when it's still sunny in California. And I've looked at the sky and seen that the moon is upside down in the southern hemisphere.

              I have personally verified by observation that the Earth is not flat.

            • _I_ have not been to the ISS and seen the earth.

              You... need to get an urgent grip. Or feel free to reproduce Eratosthenes' work?

              Even simpler - just look at our planetary neighbours. Not the moon - it's tidally locked and won't help resolve your apparent issues.

          • But if they ask me "Can you be one hundred percent certain?" I'll always have to say "Well, no".

            Terrible example. We are 100% certain about the shape of the planet. There is ZERO chance of being wrong here. None. It is sort of slightly oval but mostly round.

            We are only certain to a degree. I have a high degree of confidence that the earth is an oblate spheroid. But we'll seldom say 100 percent certain. But if it isn't, there is no substitute that makes any sense - and no, the platter shaped earth fails on every level.

            We are not 100% certain where detection, observation and reproduction are difficult. Here we rely on multiple, overlapping, data to test the current prevailing hypothesis to abstraction. If we continually fail to disprove - and that is actually the whole point behind the scientific method - the hypothesis then we accept that it is very likely true and it becomes a foundational theory upon which we proceed to build.

            This is true. One of the things that many people do not understand is that science doesn't declare that it has the final answer to anything. Science "understands" that in the world of falsifiable ideas, that it is possible to say, refute Einstein

          • But if they ask me "Can you be one hundred percent certain?" I'll always have to say "Well, no".

            Terrible example. We are 100% certain about the shape of the planet. There is ZERO chance of being wrong here.

            I think there are different definitions of what "100% certain" means here. What if you're actually a brain in a jar, being fed sensory input artificially? What if you're living in a simulation? What if you're the only consciousness in existence and everything else is a hallucination?

            Are any of these likely? There's no way to tell. They aren't useful hypotheses, but they're at least possible to imagine, which means I, for one, can't feel 100% certain of anything. There's always a possibility that anything I

        • If you are not 100% is a kind of a sphere, then you are probably indeed an autist.

          • If you are not 100% is a kind of a sphere, then you are probably indeed an autist.

            Write you oddly, you do!

            Try again?

      • I would not call that "wrong".
        I would call that "refinement"

        If the oldest evidence is 7,500 years old: then it is as that.

        Older evidence has to be discovered first.

        And if it is, it does not make previous one wrong. It is still true. It is just not the oldest anymore.

        • In North American anthropology the old guard has fought tooth n nail when older evidence has been found.

          The dates only got pushed back each time that generation's guardians of truth retired or died.

          The evidence for 35k years has been around for almost 20 years. The official dates is still roughly 17k.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by Rei ( 128717 )

            1) Clovis (the one formerly widely thought to be the first peoples) was ~13k, not ~17k.

            2) No claimed site in the ~35k range has significant scientific buy-in. There will always be people making fringe claims - the Cerutti Mastodon site for example. But they have to actually survive scientific rigor and convince others. And the simple fact is that the evidence for them just isn't that good.

            3) General acceptance today is ~16-20k, with some dispute around the periphery (for example, the White Sands footprint

            • There is more to the story as to why claims of people-in-the-Americas-before 13K before present were viewed with a jaundiced eye.

              The date 13K BP wasn't just an arbitrary number that popped out of mass spectrometer examining a splinter of wood found at a dig. The theory is that the Americas were populated by a land migration across what is now the Bering Straights, a migration made possible by low sea levels resulting from the enormous amount of water bound up in the Ice Age northern ice sheet. But this

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by colfer ( 619105 )

              The resistance to change was a bit high in this case it seems. People have jobs, career, etc. As always with Thomas Kuhn arguments on change, it's a matter of degree. Medical science is highly innovative but lead researchers are notoriously hidebound and autocratic and/or overly revered. Look at what happened at Duke, with a lowly postdoc calling out the biostats of a prestigious and promising research group, the lead protected on up to the provost, until finally the NIH imposed a big sanction. https://en.w [wikipedia.org]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gtall ( 79522 )

      Science rarely "says" anything is fact, their statements are usually if theory A is correct, then B. It is people like you who promote those statements to "Science says B".

    • Re:If you don't learn from the past, you're doomed (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Rei ( 128717 ) on Tuesday November 05, 2024 @06:34AM (#64920775) Homepage

      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.

      The entire job of theoretical physicists is to create models of the universe that explain as much as possible in as simple of a system as possible, figure out what possible observations could prove or disprove said models, develop and operate the tools to take those observations, and see how well they match the model.

      When something doesn't match some of our best models, that's reason to cheer, not to be upset. The current state of physics is disappointingly imperfect - for example, linking together relativity with quantum physics, explaining dark energy, resolving the black hole information paradox, explaining gravity (and its weakness), etc etc - and we want better models, and the way to get there is to find cases where current models break down. As a general rule, if an observation matches current models, that's a boring, if not outright disappointing, observation.

      The only cases where it would be more frustrating than exciting is where things make the universe more complex in ways that are difficult to resolve any other way. For example, the Higgs field simplified a lot in the models, so it would have been disappointing if it had to be abandoned because the Higgs boson couldn't be found in the constrained range. But even huge complications are often exciting in their own right. Newtonian mechanics seemed to explain almost everything, until both relativity and quantum physics and the whole particle zoo showed that that things were way more complicated than we thought once you look at extreme circumstances. But digging into the new information and building new models that incorporate it has proved a fascinating field for countless physicists over the past century.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by colfer ( 619105 )

        Correct me if I'm wrong, but in classical physics electro-magnetism was always a bit of a problem theoretically, and with some observations here and there. The excellent formulas did work. Newtonian mechanics and gravity seemed more natural by contrast. The surprising thing was that solving the EM situation also involved changing gravity.

    • Every time someone says "this is a fact about the universe", 10-20 years later they're proven wrong time and time again.

      Not really. What actually happens is that we keep on refining our knowledge, making better and better approximations to reality. Newton's law of gravity wasn't "proven wrong"-- we use it all the time; it explains the solar system and the paths of spacecraft-- but it was refined and extended by Einstein.

      However, headline science always wants to hype the newest and most extreme science. The work of painstakingly putting together experimental support to confirm or reject a hypothesis isn't as glamorous as to

      • Relevant: The Relativity of Wrong [upenn.edu], essay by Issac Asimov. "... when people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."

        Also relates to Korzybski, since it argues for a range of possibilities between "right" and "wrong" or "true" and "false". A non-binary view, if you will.

        (Correction: "

  • So it's like the typical American eating a meal?

  • Give me a break! (Score:3)

    by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Tuesday November 05, 2024 @09:35AM (#64921093)

    Seriously guys, you are making such a big deal out of nothing, I put on a few winter pounds, just cut me some slack until spring. You guys are the worst! ;_;

  • https://arstechnica.com/scienc... [arstechnica.com]

    'they estimate the black hole's original mass was about 100 times that of the Sun. "This lifetime suggests that a substantial fraction of the mass growth of LID-568 may have occurred in a single, super-Eddington accretion episode," they conclude. For that to work, the black hole had to have ended up in a giant molecular cloud and stayed there feeding for over 10 million years.'

  • HHGG (Score:2)

    by KlomDark ( 6370 )
    "Eddingtons," said Ford, "in the space-time continuum." "Ah," nodded Arthur, "is he. Is he."
  • You have to take the rotational vector out of the red shift calculations, then you find out that the universe isnt expanding or accelerating in expansion....

    Says people much smarter than me
    I have a video from an MIT physics professor where he says this, but I never seem to be able to find the link when this comes up.

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