Thus, we must wonder whether
the first black hole seeds could have formed through other channels.
Not exact matches
As an explanation for the
first quasars, each of these pathways for the formation of
black hole seeds has the same problem: the
seeds would have to grow extraordinarily quickly within the
first billion years of cosmic history to create the earliest quasars.
Finding the
first seed black holes could help reveal how the relation between
black holes and their host galaxies evolved over time.
In effect, if the
first quasars grew from Population III
black hole seeds, they would have had to eat faster than the Eddington rate.
It is difficult to imagine a scenario in which the
black holes powering the
first quasars grew from
seeds this small.
Current theories suggest that the
seeds of these
black holes were the result of either the growth and collapse of the
first generation of stars in the Universe; collisions between stars in dense stellar clusters; or the direct collapse of extremely massive stars in the early Universe.
The amplitude and frequency of these waves could reveal the initial mass of the
seeds from which the
first black holes grew since they were formed 13 billion years ago and provide further clues about what caused them and where they formed, the researchers said.
«By combining the detection of gravitational waves with simulations we could ultimately work out when and how the
first seeds of supermassive
black holes formed.»
«It is pretty clear that you
first make small
seed black holes in the early universe, and over cosmic time, by swallowing gas in their vicinity, they grow,» said study co-author Priya Natarajan, a Yale astrophysicist.
One explanation for the existence of supermassive
black holes in the early universe postulates that the
first black holes were «
seeds» that grew into much larger
black holes by gravitationally attracting and then swallowing matter.