X-rays From the Young Monsters: Studying Supermassive Black Holes in the Early Universe
Submitted by chandra on Wed, 2017-01-04 10:44Fabio Vito
We are pleased to welcome Fabio Vito as our guest blogger. Fabio and his colleagues led some of the latest work involving the Chandra Deep Field-South that were presented at the 229th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in January 2017. He obtained a Ph.D. degree in Astrophysics and Cosmology from the University of Bologna (Italy) in 2014. During his studies he collaborated with researchers from the Astronomical Observatory of Bologna and also spent a 6-months period at the University of Cambridge (UK). After one year in a postdoctoral position in Bologna, he moved to his current position as a postdoctoral researcher at the Pennsylvania State University. Fabio's work is mainly focused on the growth and evolution of supermassive black holes in the early Universe, exploiting some of the deepest X-ray data available.
Black holes are among the most fascinating objects in the Universe. Probably most people have at least heard about them, maybe reading about some pseudo-scientific speculations like wormholes, time travelling, etc. Or perhaps they have watched movies such as the famous 2014 movie "Interstellar", or even by listening to music, such as the "Supermassive Black Hole" song by the British band Muse.
However, despite their popularity, our knowledge of these monsters of the Universe is limited. We know that "normal" black holes (although nothing is normal about black holes), which have masses of a few to tens of times the Sun's mass, are formed when big stars die and explode as supernovas. However, there is more than just one type of black hole. At the centers of most galaxies, there is a "monster among the monsters." This is what astronomers call a supermassive black hole (SMBH), and they can weigh from millions to billions of solar masses. Despite the fact that almost all of the normal-sized galaxies in the Universe host a SMBH in their centers (even our Milky Way!), astronomers do not know when and how they formed.