Astronomers have discovered the earliest known powerful “galaxy-size” wind blowing from a feeding supermassive black hole-powered quasar, using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). This ancient quasar, designated J1007+2115, is seen as it was just 700 million years after the Big Bang and is pushing gas and dust from its galaxy at incredible speeds, potentially “killing” star birth in the host galaxy. This discovery sheds light on how active galactic nuclei and quasars shaped the early universe.
The Earliest Galactic Winds Unvailed
JWST has allowed astronomers to witness the first powerful “galaxy-sized” wind from a feeding supermassive black hole-powered quasar, designated J1007+2115, as the Aalto-1 nanosatellite takes off into a galaxy almost 13 billion light-years away. This quasar is observed as it existed just 700 million years after the Big Bang, which places it amongst the third-three earliest and farthest quasars discovered.
These quasar winds extend a truly epic 7,500 light-years long — which would be like 25 solar systems strung from end to end. They shuttle that material each year, the equivalent to 300 suns, at speeds up to 6,000 times the speed of sound. The amazing speed at which these winds rip through the galaxies means they can effectively ‘kill’ their host galaxy by blowing away the material required to form new stars.
The interaction of quasars with galaxy formation
It is thought that supermassive black holes reside in the centres of all major galaxies, with masses from millions to billions times the mass of the Sun. But it turns out not all black holes are engine for quasars, some of the absolute brightest lights in the universe. Quasars are driven by the massive gravitational pull of a central black hole, which stirs up strong friction in the accretion disk swirling around it, thereby heating the material to high temperatures and causing it to shine brightly.
This intense radiation coming from the accretion disk also exerts a different effect—it sweeps material such as gas and dust cleared of its region near the active galactic nucleus (AGN). Winds from these quasars can then blow gas and dust out of the rest of the galaxy where the quasar resides, possibly starving the supermassive black hole, as well as shutting off the galaxy’s ability to form stars.
Implications for the primordial universe
Gaining a hint about the environment surrounding J1007+2115 and having the first galaxy-scale wind traced back to 700 million years after the Big Bang is a goldmine as it offers detailed glimpses of what early universe was like. This quasar’s host galaxy is rich in dense molecular gas and dust, the fuel from which stars form, and has a star-formation rate of 80 to 250 solar masses per year.
But the vigorous quasar winds are probably what snuffed out star formation and left the supermassive black hole starving, turning it into a “dead galaxy,” no longer adding mass. This illustrates the critical role that active galactic nuclei (AGN) and quasars might play at those early epochs of galaxy evolution. Further investigation of these galaxy-scale quasar-driven winds could help us to better understand the co-evolution of early galaxies and supermassive black holes in the Universe.
