The discovery of a tangled network of galaxies in a supermassive...

With the help of a giant telescope, affiliated with the European Southern Observatory, astronomers announced the discovery of a supermassive black hole containing 6 galaxies trapped in the gravitational network less than a billion years after the Big Bang.

Astronomers have discovered 6 galaxies in the gravitational network of a supermassive black hole that formed less than a billion years after the Big Bang.

This is the first time that such a close cluster has been observed shortly after the beginning of the universe, researchers from the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics said.

It is believed that the black holes that appeared in the first years of the universe’s life had formed from the collapse of the first stars, but until now astronomers did not know how they managed to grow so fast and huge, as their magnitude was estimated at the size of one billion suns.

Scientists were able to monitor the galaxies surrounding the supermassive black hole by the Southern European Astronomical Observatory known as the “giant telescope” located in Chile, Latin America.

There is no doubt that the discovery of this tangled network of galaxies that “feed” a supermassive black hole dating back to the beginning of the universe indicates that they are growing in the form of lattice structures containing large quantities of gases that feed these galaxies.

It is noteworthy that supermassive black holes are strange and relatively common cosmic phenomena, as they appear in the center of most galaxies, including our Milky Way.

The study’s lead author, Marco Menioli, astronomer at the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics, said the research was driven by the desire to understand supermassive black holes in the early universe.

The Italian researcher explained: “These are extremist regimes and so far we do not have a good explanation for their existence.”

According to the study published in the “Astronomy and Astrophysics” journal, all the galaxies surrounding the giant black hole were settled in a cosmic “spider web” of gas estimated to be 300 times the size of the Milky Way.

“The filaments of the cosmic web are like the strings of a spider’s web,” Minoli said.

According to the study, the gas streams, available to supply both galaxies and the central supermassive black hole, can flow along these filaments.

The study indicated that the light emitted from this grid-like structure, with its supermassive black hole of one billion solar masses, reached Earth since the universe was 900 million years old.

The science team said the discovery helped solve part of the puzzle about how these relatively abundant but extreme objects formed at such speed after the Big Bang.

It is believed that the first black holes must have grown very rapidly to one billion solar masses in the first 900 million years of the universe’s life.

Astronomers are struggling to explain how large amounts of “black hole fuel” could have been provided to enable these objects to grow so rapidly.

However, the team of researchers behind this new study predicts that it may be due to dark matter halos.

Johns Hopkins University professor and co-author of the study, Colin Norman, said the finding adds support for the theory that supermassive black holes form and grow inside massive halos of dark matter in large-scale network-like structures.

It is believed that these large regions of invisible “dark matter” attracted huge quantities of gas in the early universe.

Together, gas and invisible dark matter form network-like structures where galaxies and black holes can develop and allow a black hole to become supermassive.