Supermassive black holes aren't quite as big as experts thought

Supermassive black holes are not quite a huge as experts had previously thought.

Astronomers from the University of Southampton made the unexpected discovery while examining an infant galaxy 12 billion light years away from Earth.

Using a new powerful telescope for first time they found that the supermassive black hole in the galaxy was 10 times smaller than expected.

They now think that many other scientists could have been overestimating the size of black holes in the universe.

Lead author Dr Ric Davies from the Max Planck Institute for Extragalactic Physics in Germany said: "Many studies using the new James Webb Space telescope make use of scaling laws that might not hold at these early times.

"If our findings are typical, it means black hole masses in the early Universe may have been systematically overestimated."

The team made the discovery while looking through a telescope at the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Paranal Observatory in Chile

Experts made the discovery using an advanced astronomical instrument, called GRAVITY+, which combines the light of four of the world's largest optical telescopes at the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile.

They looked at an ancient quasar – "a galaxy with a black hole so old and bright it looks like a cosmic beacon from the dawn of time".

The instrument gazed into the heart of the quasar, revealing the spiralling motion of hot gas about to be swallowed by the supermassive black hole, which is about 800 million times the mass of our own Sun.

This is one of the optical telescopes on the platform of the Very Large Telescope

This motion was key to making this precise measurement of the black hole mass.

With the gas being swallowed up by the supermassive black hole, scientists say that this "feeding frenzy" was producing a powerful outflow of gas which could have tricked others into believing the black hole was bigger than it actually is.

The discovery has been published in the scientific journal, Astronomy and Astrophysics.

The study also revealed that the supermassive black hole is consuming gas at an unbelievable rate, much faster than commonly thought possible.

Professor Seb Hoenig of the University of Southampton and GRAVITY+ co-investigator said that the findings have helped answer some of the questions scientists have previously faced about how supermassive black holes could grow to such large size in short time periods.

He said: "We have been wondering for years how it's possible we discovered all these fully grown supermassive black holes in very young galaxies shortly after the big bang. They shouldn't have had the time to grow that massive.

"Our results suggest the methods to weigh these black holes used previously are just not working reliably in the early universe.

"It could lead to a re-evaluation of our models of cosmic evolution."