Astronomers have discovered an extraordinarily voracious supermassive black hole in the early Universe that’s breaking records. Located at the center of a galaxy called LID-568, this black hole is feeding at an unprecedented rate, gulping down material over 40 times faster than the so-called Eddington limit a theoretical maximum for accretion. Observed just 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang, this remarkable black hole offers clues to how supermassive black holes became so massive shortly after the Universe’s formation.
“This black hole is having a feast,” said Julia Scharwächter of Gemini Observatory and NSF’s NOIRLab. “This extreme case shows that a fast-feeding mechanism above the Eddington limit is one of the possible explanations for why we see these very heavy black holes so early in the Universe.”
What is the Eddington Limit?
As black holes draw in surrounding material, this material forms a disk around the black hole, heating up due to friction and gravity. This heating generates intense light, which exerts outward radiation pressure. The Eddington limit is the point at which this radiation pressure balances the black hole’s inward gravitational pull, limiting how much material can be pulled in. But some black holes defy this limit through super-Eddington accretion, taking in mass at rates that exceed this threshold, as is the case with the black hole in LID-568.
Observing a Record-Breaking Black Hole
Led by Hyewon Suh from Gemini Observatory, a research team used the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to take a closer look at LID-568. Although faint, its extreme distance implies an intrinsic brightness that’s hard to match. JWST observations confirmed that this supermassive black hole, despite being a relatively “small” one at 7.2 million solar masses, is producing an amount of light far exceeding what a black hole of this mass should, signaling an accretion rate 40 times above the Eddington limit.
The rapid and intense feeding process is expected to be brief, making this discovery particularly lucky. Astronomers believe LID-568 will now become a key observational target to further explore super-Eddington processes in the early Universe.
Insights into Black Hole Growth and Early Universe Evolution
This observation of super-Eddington accretion could help answer long-standing questions about black hole formation in the early Universe. Early supermassive black holes may have formed not from ordinary collapsing stars but from enormous clouds of gas that directly collapsed under gravity, providing them a “head start” in mass accumulation. These rare bursts of super-Eddington feeding could explain how these black holes grew to millions of solar masses so quickly.
“The discovery of a super-Eddington accreting black hole suggests that a significant portion of mass growth can occur during a single episode of rapid feeding,” Suh explained, highlighting that this growth can happen regardless of whether the black hole originated from a “light” or “heavy” seed.
As researchers continue studying LID-568 and similar galaxies, they hope to unlock more of the Universe’s ancient secrets. This discovery, published in Nature, opens new pathways for understanding the origins of supermassive black holes and their rapid growth in the early cosmic landscape.
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Reference: https://www.sciencealert.com/this-black-hole-is-eating-stuff-at-over-40-times-the-theoretical-limit
