The recently discovered “Galassia Infinity” could demonstrate how the ancient black holes were formed

A team of Astronomes discovered a curious figure in the universe. They are two distant galaxies that collide with each other to form a larger structure. From the terrestrial point of view, the junction of the discs recalls the number eight lying down, similar to the symbol of infinity (∞).

Because of this similarity, the researchers – who are based in the universities of Yale and Copenhagen – nicknamed the “Galassia Infinity” and detailed their discovery in an article published in Astrophysical diary letters. In addition to its evocative form, the structure intrigues scientists because of its content: inside it could be the first direct test of a newly formated primordial supermassive supermassive hole.

The images were taken through the James Webb space telescope and then enriched with information by the X -ray Observatory ChandraThe most powerful X -ray telescope ever created. The light of this galaxy comes from an era in which the universe was only 470 million years old, over 13.5 billion years ago. In the structure of the double galaxy, at least two consolidated black holes can be observed, each centered in a respective disk (the yellow points in the image below) and a compressed gas region at the crossroads suggests the presence of a supermassion object (the green point).

The infinite galaxy, with three points marked where there could be black holes.
Photography: NASA, P. Van Dokkum, G. Brammer

Scientists think they have seen the signs of a black direct collapse. Typically, black holes are formed when the stars run out of fuel and the collapse under their severity, but there is a phenomenon of alternative formation debated in astrophysics, where a black hole is formed through the collapse of the gigantic gas cloud, without a star having formed. This possibility has been theorized, but this type of black hole has yet to be observed.

The largest black holes found in the universe, the supermassichi black holes, have been identified in galaxies that only a few hundred millions of years have formed after the Big Bang. But what has made their training possible is not yet completely understood. It is believed that many supermassichi black holes have become the result of the fusion of smaller black holes. But with very old supermassicchi black holes, it does not seem that there has not been enough time for the first stars in the universe to evolve, collapse in black starlets in star mass and then combine with colossal and supermassic dimensions.

So some astronomers have proposed an alternative origin for the first supermassichi black holes in the universe. According to this hypothesis, black holes would not need to form a star or derive from mergers. Instead, the theory says, tufts full of subjects that in other cases gave rise to galaxies could have understood directly in huge black holes. Scientists are currently studying this scenario, although it is still lacking conclusive evidence of what has happened.

It is possible that the Galassia Infinity offers revealing clues about the possibility of this second training course. “During the collision, the gas within these two shock galaxies and compresses. This compression could be enough to form a dense knot, which then collapsed in a black hole” paperhe said in a post on his University website. “While these collisions are rare events, it is believed that the density of gas was the same quite common in the first cosmic periods, when the galaxies started forming,” added Van Dokkum.

Scientists are also taking into consideration other less spectacular alternatives on what is happening in the infinite galaxy. Instead of being created through a direct collapse of the gas, that potential extra black hole – the green point in the image above – could instead be the signs of a black hole expelled from another galaxy while “infinite” crosses it. Another possible scenario is that this image actually shows the collision of three galaxies, with the third eclipsed by the other largest.

For the moment, the team says that the preliminary results are exciting. “We cannot definitively say that we found a black hole direct collapse. But we can say that these new data strengthen the case that we are seeing a newborn black hole, eliminating some of the competition explanations,” concluded Van Dokkum in a blog For NASA.

This story originally appeared on Wired en español And it was translated by the Spaniard.