When an international team of astronomers went to observe X-ray samples of galaxies created by a Cambridge observatory, researchers said they discovered a supermassive black hole that defied what they thought possible.

Earlier this month, a team of NOIRLab astronomers from the US National Science Foundation discovered a supermassive black hole, called LID-568, that was anomalously bright, meaning it was consuming matter at a “phenomenal pace” more than 40 times faster than theory. limit, NASA said.

LID-568 was “accumulating so much material beyond the predicted maximum, exceeding that maximum luminosity limit,” Francesca Civano, chief scientist for cosmic physics at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, said in a telephone interview Thursday. “That’s what makes this source very, very cool.”

The supermassive black hole consumes matter at a rate 40 times greater than the Eddington limit, which is the maximum brightness a black hole can achieve based on how quickly it can absorb matter before it becomes unstable, according to NASA.

Astronomers discovered the black hole by using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to observe a sample of galaxies from the Chandra X-ray Observatory’s COSMOS survey, according to the observatory. website.

The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s Chandra X-ray Center controls science operations from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and flight operations from Burlington, Massachusetts, according to NASA.

Although LID-568’s “feast” was “short-lived,” astronomers say it could help them explain how monstrous black holes developed in the early universe.

“It is difficult to understand how these black holes could have grown so quickly,” NASA said in a statement. “…With the discovery of a low-mass supermassive black hole feeding on matter at an extreme rate so soon after the birth of the universe, astronomers now have valuable new insights into the mechanisms of rapid growth black holes in the early universe.

LID-568 is believed to have been at the center of a dwarf galaxy when the universe was only 1.5 billion years old. NASA said. The universe is now about 13.8 billion years old.

Scientists also say that the discovery of this particular supermassive black hole provides much clearer results than those from previous samples.

“There are a few others, but sometimes that measurement comes with a basic error bar and some things we take with a grain of salt,” Civano said. “In this case we have a very good measurement of all the properties

Supermassive black holes have masses of millions to tens of billions of times that of the Sun and exist at the centers of most galaxies, according to NASA. They were formed from “seeds” of smaller black holes, which in theory came from the death of the universe’s first stars or the direct collapse of gas clouds, according to NASA.

Before the discovery of this supermassive black hole, these theories lacked observational confirmation.

The discovery of LID-568 suggests that “a significant portion of the massive growth can occur during a single rapid feeding episode, whether the black hole comes from a light or heavy seed,” said Hyewon Suh , from the International Gemini Observatory/NSF. NOIRLab astronomer who led the research team.

Civano said the team is working to find more samples of similar objects to study.

“Of course, finding one is very interesting, but you can’t develop models or theories based on a single source,” she said. LID-568″ is an explanation of how black holes formed in the early universe, so if we find more of them (similar objects), we can make stronger predictions about the formation of black holes in the universe.”

Sabrina Lam can be contacted at [email protected].