Scientists unravel the secret of the appearance of the very first black holes

For about 20 years, scientists have been trying to figure out how supermassive black holes appeared in the early universe during the first billion years after the Big Bang. They are billions of years heavier than the Sun. According to the Independent, dark matter is involved in the birth of black holes, according to a new study. She created streams of cold gas from which the first large stars were created, and after their death, giant black holes appeared.

University of Portsmouth cosmologist Daniel Whalen said that in order for a supermassive black hole with a mass equal to 100 thousand solar masses to appear, it is necessary that the same star die. And scientists were tormented by the question of how such stars appeared, what became the basis for them.

In the Universe there is ordinary and dark matter, the latter accounts for about 25%. It affects the evolution of galaxies, but its features are not yet known.

According to the researchers, in the early Universe, dark matter was compressed under the influence of its own gravity into long cosmic filaments. She pulled ordinary matter into them. After that, a web of crossed threads appeared, within which galaxies and stars were created. There are especially many of them at the points of intersection of the threads, where there is a lot of ordinary matter. Scientists call such points cosmic halos. They believe that it was in them that the first stars appeared.

In order for a giant star and then a black hole to appear, the halo must grow, but under certain conditions. So, there should not be other stars nearby, and the gas should remain cold. Due to this, gas flows will not be able to quickly form a star, and it will grow to enormous sizes.

When such a large star dies, it turns into a supermassive black hole. It increased due to the large volume of surrounding gas that it absorbed. In the new model, scientists compiled all the necessary components and found that as a result of the impact of large flows of cold gas, stars with a mass of 31 thousand and 40 thousand solar masses were formed.

Thus, according to Whalen, the formation of a massive star occurred with the help of flows of cold gas. And then after death, it turned into a supermassive black hole.