Ancient Supermassive Black Hole Aiming At Earth With Particle Beam

Researchers discovered an ancient supermassive black hole that’s aiming its particle beam at Earth. According to their observations, the massive cosmic object could be the oldest and most distant of its kind ever discovered.

The supermassive black hole that the researchers stumbled upon has been identified as PSO J030947.49+271757.31. They noted that it is a blazar, which is a supermassive black hole sitting at the center of a galactic nucleus that’s bursting with high levels of electromagnetic emissions.

In addition to their locations, the researchers noted that blazar is often used for supermassive black holes that are targeting Earth with their jets of radiation. Although this may seem like a threat to Earth, the planet is generally not in danger from blazars since many of them are millions to billions of light-years away.

Since PSO J030947.49+271757.31 is directly aimed at Earth with its radiation jet, the researchers were able to observe it using the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT). Through the LBT, the researchers were able to collect valuable information regarding its composition and structural characteristics.

“The spectrum that appeared before our eyes confirmed first that PSO J0309+27 is actually an active galaxy nucleus, or a galaxy whose central nucleus is extremely bright due to the presence in its center of a supermassive black hole fed by the gas and the stars it engulfs,” astrophysicist Silvia Belladitta of Italy’s University of Insubria said in a statement.

Aside from its composition, studying the supermassive black hole also enabled the researchers to learn more about its age. According to the data collected by the LBT, the detectable light coming from PSO J030947.49+271757.31 was emitted by the black hole almost 13 billion years ago.

This means that the supermassive black hole was already active during the early years of the universe or around a billion years following the Big Bang. Also, since it took 13 billion years for the light to be detected from Earth, the researchers noted that PSO J030947.49+271757.31 could be the oldest and most distant blazar ever discovered.

“Thanks to our discovery, we are able to say that in the first billion years of life of the Universe, there existed a large number of very massive black holes emitting powerful relativistic jets,” Belladitta stated. This result places tight constraints on the theoretical models that try to explain the origin of these huge black holes in our Universe.”

The study conducted by the researchers on the newly discovered blazar was published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.