The team also succeeded in explaining, with a theoretical model, that the actual changes (balance of inflow and outflow) in gas levels they observed were the result of the increasing amount of gas
falling into the supermassive black holes within the gas disks enhanced by strong turbulence generated by supernova explosions (an activity associated with star formation) when a star inside the dense gas disks dies.
A conceptual rendition of gas being
driven into a supermassive black hole following a supernova explosion Strong turbulence caused by supernova explosions inside a dense molecular gas disk in the central region of a galaxy disturbs the stable motion of gas.
Black holes have to start out much larger initially in order to
grow into the supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies that we see today, unless we are missing some fundamental physics in our understanding of gas accretion.
Even though some light falls
into a supermassive black hole never to be seen again, other high - energy light emanates from both the corona and the surrounding accretion disk of superheated material.
Although the simulations do not yet completely rule out the theory, this makes it less likely that these first black holes could have grown
directly into the supermassive black holes observed to have existed less than a billion years later, Alvarez said.
Quasars are among the most luminous objects in the universe, and generally are believed to be powered by material being
drawn into a supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy, releasing large amounts of energy.
A quasar is seen by the light emitted by gas falling
into a supermassive black hole via its accretion disk, which astronomers believe is, in turn, surrounded by an even more massive halo of dark matter (more from CfA, Science, and Barakana and Loeb, 2003, in pdf).
But recently, a survey has found several quasars — bright cores of galaxies, powered by matter falling
into a supermassive black hole — that existed less than a billion years after the big bang.
Meanwhile, a correlation between the rate at which stars form in the central regions of galaxies and the amount of gas that falls
into supermassive black holes (mass accretion rate) was known to exist, leading some scientists to suggest that the activity involved in star formation fuels the growth of black holes.