{"id":146204,"date":"2022-09-12T19:26:07","date_gmt":"2022-09-13T00:26:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/09\/very-large-telescope-spots-galaxies-trapped-in-the-web-of-a-supermassive-black-hole"},"modified":"2022-09-12T19:26:07","modified_gmt":"2022-09-13T00:26:07","slug":"very-large-telescope-spots-galaxies-trapped-in-the-web-of-a-supermassive-black-hole","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/09\/very-large-telescope-spots-galaxies-trapped-in-the-web-of-a-supermassive-black-hole","title":{"rendered":"Very Large Telescope spots galaxies trapped in the web of a supermassive black hole"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/very-large-telescope-spots-galaxies-trapped-in-the-web-of-a-supermassive-black-hole2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>With the help of ESO\u2019s Very Large Telescope (VLT), astronomers have found six galaxies lying around a supermassive black hole when the Universe was less than a billion years old. This is the first time such a close grouping has been seen so soon after the Big Bang and the finding helps us better understand how supermassive black holes, one of which exists at the centre of our Milky Way, formed and grew to their enormous sizes so quickly. It supports the theory that black holes can grow rapidly within large, web-like structures which contain plenty of gas to fuel them.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis research was mainly driven by the desire to understand some of the most challenging <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/astronomical+objects\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">astronomical objects <\/a>\u2014<a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/supermassive+black+holes\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">supermassive black holes<\/a> in the early Universe. These are extreme systems and to date we have had no good explanation for their existence,\u201d said Marco Mignoli, an astronomer at the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) in Bologna, Italy, and lead author of the new research published today in Astronomy &amp; Astrophysics.<\/p>\n<p>The new observations with ESO\u2019s VLT revealed several galaxies surrounding a supermassive black hole, all lying in a cosmic \u201cspider\u2019s web\u201d of gas extending to over 300 times the size of the Milky Way. \u201cThe cosmic web filaments are like spider\u2019s web threads,\u201d explains Mignoli. \u201cThe galaxies stand and grow where the filaments cross, and streams of gas\u2014available to fuel both the galaxies and the central supermassive black hole\u2014can flow along the filaments.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With the help of ESO\u2019s Very Large Telescope (VLT), astronomers have found six galaxies lying around a supermassive black hole when the Universe was less than a billion years old. This is the first time such a close grouping has been seen so soon after the Big Bang and the finding helps us better understand [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":661,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,418,219],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-146204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cosmology","category-internet","category-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/661"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146204\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}