The concept behind Super-Massive Black Holes (SMBH) requires a complex explanation. They come in gargantuan sizes that exist individually have been thought to be found in the middle of the Milky Way Galaxy. Sometimes, the presence of these black holes sometimes defy all the explanations provided by scientists for they only base in on what they know about the outer space.
As far as science on Earth knows, black holes are a product of the giant stars that collapsed. However, this explanation does not always lend itself to the evidence at hand. The stellar-collapse method of explanation has worked well in explaining the existence of most black holes that have been identified in space. The hypothesis behind it is that when a star that is at least five times bigger than the sun begins to run out of fuel, it sends an outward pressure from the pull between its nuclear fusion and the inward gravity of its own mass. Eventually, something has got to give.
The star then goes through a supernova explosion which will then lead it to collapse on itself. What was left of the star would then me the black hole? Astrophysicists have this theory that this is how the SBMH begin. It only grows in size as it continues to feed on the matter available in space. They grow so big that they sit in the middle of an entire galaxy. However, the problem with this theory is the fact that it takes a while for everything to unfold.
As astrophysicists continue to observe several SMBH that have been considered ancient, a recent report shows that there are 83 other SMBHs out there that defy the understanding of the science of how SMBH came to be. Most of them came into existence 690 million years before the great Big Bang Theory happened. Most of the SMBHs that were discovered are far greater than the sun.
The new set of SMBHs that was discovered was said to have formed 800 million years after the Great Big Bang Theory. However, this time frame is not enough for a stellar-collapse model to explain. The question that astrophysicists were left with is this -- how did those black holes become so large in so little time?
Researchers from Western University in Ontario, Canada believe that they have an explanation for this. They call their hypothesis the "direct collapse" that aims to explain the existence of these ancient SMBH. Their paper on this entitled "The Mass Function of Supermassive Black Holes in the Direct Collapse Scenario was published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
"Supermassive Black Holes only had a short period of time to grow fast and then suddenly, their growth just stopped because the radiation present in the universe because of the other black holes that exist," explains Basu, an astronomy professor from Western University and lead author of the study. "This is indirect evidence of the origin of black holes comes from direct collapses and not from stellar remnants."
