In the early universe, black holes blew 20 times more powerful winds

Researchers from the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics studied the effects of winds emanating from

from black holes, to 30 quasars observed in distant parts of the universe.The scientists analysed data from the Very Large Telescope (VLT) at ESO's Paranal Observatory in Chile.The observations date back to an epoch of 500 million to one billion yearsafter the Big Bang. 

The authors found that about halfThe quasars observed in the study show the influence of winds that are much more frequent and 20 times more powerful than those previously observed in quasars from closer space, when the universe was about four billion years old.

“For the first time, we have measured the proportion of quasars in a youngUniverse showing the winds of black holes. Unlike what we observe in the Universe closer to us, we found that the winds of black holes in the young Universe are very frequent, have high speeds up to 17% of the speed of light and throw a lot of energy into their host galaxy,” says Manuela. Bishetti, one of the authors of the study.

Researchers note that powerful windsslow down the growth of black holes. The energy brought in by the wind, scientists believe, stopped the accretion of matter onto the black hole, slowed its growth and launched the phase of "general evolution" of the black hole and the galaxy in which it is located.

Observations of black holes in the young universeshow that they grow much faster than their host galaxies, whereas in the local universe we know that black holes and galaxies co-evolve. This means that at some point in the Universe, a mechanism must have been operating that slows down the growth of a black hole. Our observations have allowed us to identify this mechanism in black hole winds that emerged when the universe was between 500 million and one billion years old.

Chiara Feruglio, researcher at the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics and co-author of the paper

Scientists believe that the discovery of powerful galactic winds and their study will help to better understand the evolution of the early universe, the development of black holes and galaxies.

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