(ORDO NEWS) — The formation of supermassive black holes remains one of the unsolved mysteries of astrophysics. Such objects can gain millions and billions of solar masses, which takes a lot of time. However, there are known supermassive black holes that appeared less than a billion years after the Big Bang. Various hypotheses are put forward explaining their accelerated formation: for example, without the original star, due to the collapse of dense accumulations of gas and dust.
The new idea was proposed by a team of European and South American astronomers, whose article was published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The authors drew attention to the fact that most of the mass of galaxies falls on mysterious dark matter, which does not manifest itself in any way other than gravity acting on ordinary matter.
A sparse halo of dark matter surrounds galaxies, and its concentration grows closer to the center. Scientists suggest that here it can form a stable “core”, and if the density of dark matter is high enough, it can collapse to form a black hole. According to the estimates of Carlos Argüelles and his colleagues, such a process should develop much faster than in traditional models, and could lead to the appearance of supermassive black holes already in the young Universe.
“The new scenario offers a natural explanation for the formation of supermassive black holes in the early Universe,” adds Arguelles, “without requiring either the preliminary appearance of large stars or completely unrealistic accretion rates (as alternative models. – Ed.).” It is curious that in not too large galaxies the mass of dark matter should be insufficient for collapse, and the “dark core” in them can remain stable for a long time. Its gravity, in some respects, is capable of simulating the presence of a black hole.
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