Supermassive black holes exist at the center of most galaxies, and modern telescopes continue to observe them at surprisingly early times in the Universe’s evolution. It’s difficult to understand how these black holes were able to grow so big so rapidly. But with the discovery of a low-mass supermassive black hole feasting on material at an extreme rate, seen just 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang, astronomers now have valuable new insights into the mechanisms of rapidly growing black holes in the early Universe.

In this podcast, Hyewon Suh and Julia Scharwächter discuss the discovery of LID-568, a black hole that is feeding at 40 times the theoretical limit.

 

Bios:

Rob Sparks is in the Communications, Education and Engagement group at NSF’s NOIRLab in Tucson, Arizona.

 

Hyewon Suh’s research mainly focuses on the multi-wavelength studies of Active Galactic Nuclei and their host galaxies to understand the growth of black holes in the context of galaxy evolution. While the deep, large-area extragalactic surveys have greatly enriched our knowledge of the early universe, there are several missing pieces in the understanding of the formation and the growth of supermassive black holes. She is interested in the most energetic and obscured phase of accreting black holes to explore the formation of the first accreting black holes, and to provide the crucial observational constraints on a hidden phase in the early universe.

 

Julia Scharwächter’s main research area is the (co-)evolution of galaxies and their supermassive black holes. She is interested in studying the role of AGN feedback and the nature of black hole mass-host galaxy scaling relations. Her observational projects mostly aim at spatially resolved studies of galaxy nuclei in the nearby Universe. She uses 3D spectroscopy in the optical, near-infrared, and at millimeter wavelengths to probe the stellar and gas component in galaxies, with a special focus on gas-kinematic black hole mass measurements and gas excitation/kinematics around AGN. She is also interested in galaxy dynamics and galaxy merger simulations using N-body/SPH codes.

 

Links:

NOIRLab Press Release: https://noirlab.edu/public/news/noirlab2427/

NOIRLab social media channels can be found at

https://www.facebook.com/NOIRLabAstro

https://twitter.com/NOIRLabAstro

https://www.instagram.com/noirlabastro/

https://www.youtube.com/noirlabastro

 

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