More than ten years ago, astronomers made a discovery that has puzzled them ever since – supermassive black holes appeared to have popped up soon after the start of the Universe. It is thought to take billions of years for supermassive black holes to form, but at least 20 of them were spotted at the dawn of the Universe, just 800 million years after the Big Bang. A team of researchers from Dublin City University, Columbia University, Georgia Tech, and the University of Helsinki, have now used computer simulations to attempt to solve the mystery. The results say a black hole can grow quickly if the galaxy it is in stops forming stars....To stop stars forming, there has to be a bright galaxy nearby, emitting radiation that can split molecular hydrogen into atomic hydrogen. This prevents stars in the galaxy from forming from the molecular hydrogen...."The nearby galaxy can't be too close, or too far away, and like the Goldilocks principle, too hot or too cold," said co-author John Wise, from Georgia Tech. The researchers published their findings in Nature Astronomy. John Wise is an associate professor in the School of Physics.
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