Black hole-invisible discovered

An international team of astronomers led by specialists from the Australian National University has managed to detect radio signals from hot gas around a supermassive black hole, which itself remains invisible to instruments.

According to the study published in Nature Astronomy, the discovered black hole formed about 12.9 billion years ago, during the early Universe period.

"This discovery gives us the most detailed observation of hot molecular gas near a black hole at such an early stage of the Universe's development, allowing us to study in detail the conditions around a rapidly growing black hole," reports Phys.org. "The research indicates that many black holes may be hiding behind cosmic dust, but now they can be detected using a new observational approach."

For their observations, Professor Ken-ichi Tadaki's team used the high-precision instruments of the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) telescope. Thanks to this equipment, scientists were able to detect a hidden black hole with a mass exceeding the Sun's by more than a billion times. The study also showed that similar invisible black holes may be widespread throughout the Universe, and the new method opens up possibilities for their detection.

"Our results help understand the evolution of black holes from tiny seeds to supermassive objects, as well as solve problems related to dust and gas hiding them," notes study co-author Dr. Takafumi Tsukui. "This discovery is critically important for understanding black holes in the early Universe, as many supermassive black holes may be hiding in dusty regions, remaining undetected."

According to the scientist, for the first time it was established that intense X-ray radiation from matter spiraling around the black hole, as well as powerful winds and shock waves, heat the surrounding gas to extremely high energy states.

These energy levels significantly exceed those observed in ordinary galactic environments, where the main source of energy is ultraviolet radiation from stars.

"Since radio waves detected by ALMA are practically not absorbed by dust, our technology becomes a powerful tool for detecting hidden supermassive black holes," concludes Dr. Tsukui.