HONOLULU, June 15 (UPI) -- A fundamental link exists between early black hole growth and galaxy formation in the very early universe, an observational study by U.S. scientists indicates.
Ezequiel Treister of University of Hawaii and colleagues used archival X-ray observations to measure black hole growth in galaxies at high redshift, that is, distant galaxies from about 1 billion years after the Big Bang, Nature reported. The study was published Wednesday on Nature's Web site.
The initial conditions of black hole seeding are erased quickly during the growth process, making direct observations of early formation of black holes difficult to obtain, scientists note. Also, much of the black hole growth is hidden by clouds of gas and dust that absorb most radiation.
The new study not only pinpointed these mega-black holes, but also determined they were closely tied to the evolution of their parent galaxies, the researchers said.
While scientists can't see a black hole itself, they can detect the material being pulled into it, Space.com reported. As the particles speed up, they emit massive amounts of energy.
"It's actually natural to expect all of these [early] galaxies to have growing supermassive black holes," Treister told SPACE.com. "And yet people hadn't found them before."
Supermassive black holes are huge objects that can have masses of up to millions or billions of times the mass of our sun. Smaller, stellar black holes form from the collapse of a single massive star, and can have masses of between 10 or 20 times the mass of the sun.
Treister said he and his team searched for the first black holes indirectly. After using the Hubble Space Telescope to identify likely candidates, they studied their X-ray emission by using Chandra X-Ray Observatory.
