Galaxies are not randomly distributed in the universe. They come together not only in clusters, but also in huge interconnected thread-like structures with huge barren spaces between them. This “cosmic web” was initially vague, but over time it became more apparent as gravity brought matter together.

Astronomers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have discovered a filamentous structure made up of 10 galaxies that existed just 830 million years after the Big Bang. The 3 million light-year-long structure is pinned by a bright quasar, a galaxy with an active supermassive black hole at its center. The team believes that the filament will eventually become a massive galaxy cluster, similar to the well-known Coma cluster in the nearby universe.

“I was surprised at how long and narrow this rope was,” said team member Xiaohui Fan of the University of Arizona in Tucson. “I was expecting to find something, but I wasn’t expecting such a tall, distinctly slender build.”

“This is one of the oldest filamentous structures that humans have found associated with a distant quasar,” added Feige Wang of the University of Arizona in Tucson, who is the principal investigator of the program.

This discovery is the result of the ASPIRE project (Spectroscopic investigation of biased halos in the Age of Reionization), whose main purpose is to study the cosmic environment of the oldest black holes. In total, the program will observe 25 quasars that existed during the first billion years after the Big Bang, known as the Re-ionization Period.

breeding monsters

Another part of the study examines the properties of eight quasars in the young universe. The team confirmed that their central black hole, which existed less than a billion years after the Big Bang, is between 600 million and 2 billion times the mass of our Sun. Astronomers continue to look for evidence to explain how these black holes can expand so quickly.

“To create these supermassive black holes in such a short time, two criteria need to be met. First, you need to start growing from a huge “seed” black hole. Second, even if that seed starts with a mass equivalent to a thousand Suns, it will still be possible in its lifetime. At its highest rate it still has to accumulate a million times more matter.”

This is an artist’s concept of a galaxy with a bright quasar at its center. A quasar is a very bright, distant and active supermassive black hole whose mass is millions or billions of times that of the Sun. Among the brightest objects in the universe, a quasar shines more than all the stars in its host galaxy combined. Image credit: NASA, ESA and J. Olmsted (STScI)

“These unprecedented observations provide important clues to how black holes come together. We learned that these black holes exist in large, young galaxies that provide a fuel tank for their growth,” said Jinyi Yang of the University of Arizona, who led ASPIRE’s black hole research. said.

Webb also provided the best evidence yet on how early supermassive black holes potentially regulated star formation in their galaxies. While supermassive black holes accumulate matter, they can also eject massive amounts of material. These winds can extend far beyond the black hole on the galactic scale and have a significant effect on star formation.

“Strong winds from black holes can inhibit star formation in the main galaxy. Such winds have been observed in the near universe, but not directly during the reionization period,” Yang said. “The scale of the wind is related to the structure of the quasar. In Webb’s observations, we see that such winds existed in the early universe.”