The oldest, brightest black holes in the universe were born from violent gas attacks, new study suggests

Twinkling like lighthouses on a shore 13 billion light-years away from Earth, quasars are some of the oldest, bright relics of the early universe.

Short for "quasi-stellar radio sources," quasars are black holes that are millions to billions of times larger than the sun. Quasars are found at the center of many large galaxies. Roughly 200 quasars have been identified as forming within the first billion years of our universe, thanks to their exceptional luminosity.

How could such objects form so early? The question has been vexing researchers for more than two decades since the first quasars were found.

It is the most distant quasar ever found.

Researchers used a computer simulation to model star formation in the early universe, focusing on a rare juncture where two streams of cold, turbulent gas met. The natural "clouds" where two streams met were exceedingly rare within the first billion years after the Bigbang, making them a tempting area of study.

There are two large clumps of star-forming gas at the center of these streams over the course of millions of years. The team was surprised that the clumps never coalesced into normal-size stars.

The cold streams caused turbulence in the gas cloud that prevented normal stars from forming until the cloud became so massive it collapsed under its own weight. There were two stars, one was 30,000 solar mass and the other 40,000.

A quasar has to measure between 10,000 and 100,000 solar mass at its birth, according to previous studies. The primordial stars from the new simulation could be viable "seeds" for the universe's first quasars.

It's possible that both large stars could have collapsed into black holes very quickly and then continued to consume gas as they grew into super massive quasars. The researchers wrote that as the monster black holes continue to grow, they could even merge, releasing a torrent of space-time ripples. It is1-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-6556

The formation of stars in the early universe has been thought of as a myth for a long time. Studies have shown that primordial stars can only form in extreme environments with strong ultraviolet radiation. Exotic environments may not be necessary according to a new simulation. There are streams of cold gas where the seeds of quasars can be found.

The first black holes were the result of structure formation in the early universe.

It was originally published on Live Science