New discoveries reveal an astonishing supermassive black hole that was born during the earliest days of the cosmos, and finding out how this giant grew so large so quickly may help to explain the very formation of the universe itself.
Thanks for watching. Follow for more videos.
#cosmosspacescience
#howtheuniverseworks
#season9
#episode9
#cosmology
#astronomy
#spacescience
#spacetime
#space
#nasa
#blackhole
#monsterblackhole
#birthofblackhole
Thanks for watching. Follow for more videos.
#cosmosspacescience
#howtheuniverseworks
#season9
#episode9
#cosmology
#astronomy
#spacescience
#spacetime
#space
#nasa
#blackhole
#monsterblackhole
#birthofblackhole
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00supermassive black holes the engines that power our universe supermassive black holes are one of
00:13the major players in the evolution of galaxies with no supermassive black holes you have no
00:20Milky Way galaxy no Sun no Earth no you they're the driving force at the heart of nearly every
00:29galaxy in the cosmos they are the most monstrous and scary and bizarre aspects of our world which
00:35just fascinates me now a new mystery has emerged about the oldest supermassive black holes we see
00:45supermassive black holes in the very early universe and we don't understand how they grew so large so
00:51quickly we have clues about their formation but can we solve the mystery of this supermassive
00:58growth spurt 2017 scientists gazing deep into the distant universe discover something completely
01:22unexpected a vast supermassive black hole dating from the earliest days of the universe this was
01:32690 million years after the Big Bang the universe was about five or six percent of the age that it is
01:40now finding a supermassive black hole in the early universe it's like finding an NFL defensive lineman
01:49playing in peewee football something that big shouldn't exist that young the supermassive black hole wasn't
01:58just super early it was super big 800 million times the mass of our Sun in just a few hundred million
02:09years the universe has somehow been able to collapse nearly a billion sun's worth of material into a giant
02:15black hole and we honestly just don't know how that's possible we measure black holes by the mass of our
02:22solar solar mass regular or stellar black holes or a few to a hundred solar masses supermassive black holes
02:32weigh from 100,000 to billions of suns and scientists have now found over 100 of these monsters in the
02:41early universe we were shocked to find even one of them existing so early after the big bang it was kind of
02:49kind of freakish to be honest but then to find that there's whole populations of these things
02:54that exist and are well in place at the earliest times that we can look at was truly shocking
03:01we believe supermassive black holes might help explain the evolution and the destiny of the
03:06universe astronomers are striving to understand them understanding the origin of supermassive
03:15black holes and how they could form so early in the universe's history is something that would change
03:23all of astronomy and astrophysics how do you get something that massive to form in such a short
03:29amount of time it's a big question to begin to answer it we have to start small by asking how
03:37regular stellar black holes form black holes form through the collapse of stars everyone knows that
03:45you have a big enough star and it'll collapse to form a black hole
03:52a really massive star dies in a violent supernova explosion and if they have sufficient mass
03:57what's left over collapses into a black hole
04:05the bigger the star was the bigger the black hole is to start with were the stars of the early universe
04:12big enough to collapse into supermassive black holes the very early universe was much different than the
04:20universe you see around us today it was filled entirely with hydrogen and helium gas this gas amassed
04:29into giant clouds which collapsed under their own gravity nuclear fusion ignited the dense cores and the first stars
04:38were born now we think that these earliest clouds of gas probably made bigger stars than clouds of gas do
04:47in our local or today's universe it was possible to get huge giant stars that we call population three stars
04:55stars that were just utterly massive population three stars are the oldest category of star
05:03like stellar dinosaurs they dominated the universe a long time ago now they're extinct
05:10they'd be weird stars they would be incredibly bright in the ultraviolet and have very unique
05:16signatures that are very different from stars today but precisely because they're so big and so bright
05:21they would be very short-lived these first stars lived fast and died young
05:31exploding in supernovas leaving behind black holes but were they super massive black holes
05:41when a star blows up when it goes supernova most of the mass is ejected away it just goes flying out
05:48leaving a dense neutron star or perhaps a black hole but it won't have much mass because most of that
05:53mass was blown away even though population three stars in the infant universe were very large
06:02they weren't big enough to leave a supermassive black hole behind when they exploded perhaps if we
06:09can skip the supernova step that might be one pathway to understanding how supermassive black holes formed
06:16could a dying star's entire mass collapse into a black hole a clue may lie in a galaxy nicknamed the fireworks galaxy
06:27the fireworks galaxy has that flashy name because when you look at it there are all these supernova
06:34explosions going off and making quite a show
06:38recently astronomers were keeping an eye on one extremely bright star in the fireworks galaxy
06:50this star is exactly the kind that we know explodes as a supernova astronomers expected it to explode
06:58but then it did something even weirder astronomy is so wonderful because sometimes you see things right in
07:04front of your eyes that you can't explain we saw an entire star just disappear in 2007 the star looked
07:12like this by 2015 it had completely vanished there was no flare or debris from a supernova explosion
07:24so what the heck is going on it turns out that not every massive star blows up with all the fireworks
07:31of a normal supernova you can get what's called a failed supernova a supernova fails when the shockwave
07:39generated inside a collapsing star can't escape in some cases when the star is very massive the shockwave
07:46never has a chance to get all the way out of the star by the time the star itself collapses into a black
07:51hole then you have a failed supernova the fireworks galaxy star may have been massive enough to smother its own
08:00explosion before collapsing to form a black hole everything collapses into the black hole you can
08:08actually have a black hole with all the mass of the original star back in the early universe could
08:14the enormous population three stars have died as failed supernovas leaving behind supermassive black holes
08:22these population three stars don't seem to me to be a good contender for the precursor to supermassive
08:31black holes they just would not have enough mass even the most massive stars are only a couple of
08:36hundred times more massive than our sun whereas a supermassive black hole is millions or billions of times
08:43the mass of our sun early supermassive black holes can't have formed from collapsing stars
08:50even giant stars aren't massive enough so is there some other path to being supermassive
08:57were stellar black holes cosmic bodybuilders on a fast track bulking program
09:02how did supermassive black holes in the early universe get so large so quickly we ruled out the idea
09:22that they were created from the collapse of very large stars maybe they started out as smaller stellar
09:29mass black holes and grew to be supermassive by eating black holes are not fussy eaters they'll
09:37consume anything that comes in their path you know gas planets stars it doesn't matter and everything
09:44that they consume adds mass to the black hole we've spotted a stellar mass black hole currently eating in
09:52our milky way galaxy 15 times the mass of the sun cygnus x1 is steadily feeding off the material that
10:01swirls around it some black holes are fed through things called accretion discs it's kind of like
10:08the rings around saturn there's this thick or thin disc of material around the black hole that feeds it
10:16cygnus x1 secretion disc gets constant refills from a nearby source a vast star 20 times the mass of
10:26the sun called a blue supergiant the black hole has been feeding on gas from this star for about five
10:34million years so if you ask how do black holes eat or consume gas the answer is gravity these are very
10:41massive objects and anything that comes within their sphere of influence can be consumed by the black
10:47hole the more mass a black hole gains the greater its gravity and the more food it attracts a black
10:56hole growing is a little bit like a snowball rolling down a hill the bigger the snowball gets the more snow
11:02it can accumulate and so the bigger it gets it's a runaway effect but even if cygnus x1 follows this
11:09runaway growth trajectory it still may never reach supermassive status the black holes of the early
11:18universe must have fed at a much faster rate the biggest issue is how do you have enough time in the
11:27early universe to go from a small black hole that's born from a star to something that's supermassive
11:36grs 1915 is another stellar mass black hole it's a greedy eater accreting at up to 40 times the rate
11:48of cygnus x1 and when something gobbles food that quickly it can begin to overheat the black hole is
11:58accreting a lot of material and as it's eating the accretion disc really heats up to very high temperatures
12:05and at those high temperatures you can get a lot of light coming out of the system so the more
12:10material that a black hole eats and swallows the brighter it shines this stellar black hole sometimes
12:18eats so much so quickly its accretion disc pushes out radiation almost a million times brighter than our sun
12:26but this brightness has a serious consequence it stops the black hole from eating and growing larger
12:36if you wanted me to gain as much mass as possible as quickly as possible you would just keep feeding me
12:43hamburgers non-stop or whatever but black holes have a problem that when they eat a lot they tend to just
12:51gobble up a lot of the food in the neighborhood and then also they start shining out so much stuff that
12:55it pushes away much of the food the brightness or luminosity gets so intense it pushes away
13:03incoming material a sort of safety valve called the eddington limit so in many ways the eddington rate
13:11could be a kind of a speed limit for the growth of black holes it could be a governor that prevents black
13:16holes from growing even faster but just dumping more and more gas onto it eventually you're going
13:22to hit that ending limit and that more gas that you're dumping on won't actually reach the black hole
13:29this cosmic method of portion control means that stellar black holes in the early universe
13:35couldn't have gained weight fast enough to become super massive
13:41black holes need time to grow they need to feed they need to eat maybe you need to
13:46skip a few steps maybe you need to start at a medium size or bigger in order to get to supermassive
13:54by the time we observe it so was there another type of black hole in the early universe something big
14:01enough to grow super massive in the time available
14:04in 2017 astronomers studied a dense star cluster called 47 tukini on the outskirts of our own galaxy
14:20they detected 25 pulsars bodies that spin and emit radiation like cosmic lighthouses
14:27these pulsars are all orbiting a central object and even though we couldn't see the central object
14:36itself we could watch the behavior and the orbits of all these pulsars around it and we could figure
14:43out how big that central object was well when you do the math you come up with something that is about
14:491500 to 2000 times the mass of the sun that's actually hidden in the heart of that globular cluster
14:56so what is the invisible object whatever is lurking at the center of 47 tukini has to be big
15:05and it has to be black astronomers think it's a large black hole at 1500 times the mass of the sun
15:14the object is much bigger than a regular stellar black hole but too small to be super massive
15:20could it be what's known as an intermediate mass black hole it's extremely hard to find any of these
15:29intermediate mass black holes this rare category of black hole ranges between 100 and 100 000 solar
15:38masses at that size they may have been large enough to become super massive very quickly intermediate mass
15:47black holes could be what give super massive black holes a head start in life astronomers have never
15:54seen an intermediate mass black hole but now we've heard one calling to us from across the universe
16:03astronomers search for intermediate mass black holes they may have been large enough to act
16:22as seeds for the first super massive black holes yet so far they've escaped discovery they're like
16:30the missing link and i mean that for real they're missing imagine you're an alien who's arrived on the
16:35planet earth and you know very little about the human species and when you look around you only notice
16:42tiny tiny little children and grown adults you don't see any adolescence right and intrinsically you
16:48know that the tiny little children grow up to be full-size adults but you don't see how they got there
16:56right you don't see the intermediate stages of growth that would be really really weird right
17:00that is the case for supermassive black holes so it's like a universe without teenagers
17:06or that's how it looked until september 2020. scientists studying gravitational waves picked up the
17:14signal of an extreme event in the distant universe what researchers are looking for are things called
17:21gravitational waves they're like ripples in space itself most signals sound a little bit like a chirp
17:29it's a noise that's very characteristic it goes a bit like sort of whoop
17:36but this particular event was so extreme and so sudden it just sounded more like a thud
17:41this faint thud from halfway across the universe is music to the ears of intermediate black hole hunters
17:52because its pitch can mean only one thing this could only have been created by two really massive black
17:59holes colliding into each other and producing a combined black hole with a mass that's 142 times the mass
18:10of our sun so that is for the first time getting into this intermediate mass black hole regime
18:18this is the first confirmed observation of an intermediate black hole finding direct evidence
18:26like this for an intermediate mass black hole is absolutely fantastic now that we're certain intermediate
18:33black holes exist could they help explain the origin of supermassive black holes in the early universe
18:41these intermediate black holes really could be the first seeds of the supermassive black holes
18:47you would need something like that to form really big really early to even begin to explain
18:53these very massive supermassive black holes that have formed just a short time after the big bang
18:58how do intermediate black holes form in the first place the recently discovered one came from
19:06the collision of two smaller black holes they may also form in giant clouds of gas
19:14it could be that in the earlier universe you can just have large clouds of gas that can lose enough
19:22energy quickly enough to just spontaneously collapse and form a black hole of this size the enormous
19:29cloud of gas contracts and gets denser and denser the way it would if it was starting to form stars but
19:36it's somehow able to remain coherent and collapse into one giant object that forms an intermediate mass black
19:42hole a giant gas cloud undergoing a direct collapse down to an intermediate mass black hole
19:51would be a rare sight
19:56you think it would go giant cloud slowly collapsing black hole but instead it's more like giant cloud
20:04black hole so one day you see this massive gas complex and then you blink and it's collapsed
20:14and now you're face to face with a big black hole at least that's the theory
20:19getting a black hole to form from the direct collapse of a gas cloud is very tricky gas clouds tend to
20:28split up and collapse into a multitude of stars collapsing into one object would take unique conditions
20:36one possible scenario involves two neighboring galaxies the first a young proto galaxy
20:46a gas cloud yet to form stars next door sits a larger galaxy it's forming so many stars radiation is bursting
20:57out all over its young neighbor because they're in close proximity the energy from the large galaxy
21:05prevents the smaller galaxy from forming its stars so that means that it'll continue to collapse in cloud
21:12form before moving to star formation the gas cloud becomes large and dense enough the gravity eventually pulls it in on itself
21:23when it can't ignite into stars the collapse creates an intermediate mass black hole
21:28i think this idea is very intriguing i don't know if it's physically possible but then again there's a lot
21:37we don't know about the early universe whichever way intermediate mass black holes form they seem
21:45like a good way to start explaining supermassive black holes in the early universe the question is then how do they
21:52grow how do you start from this seed and end up you know with something that's a billion times the mass of the sun
22:00maybe early intermediate mass black holes had enormous appetites gorging themselves to a supermassive state
22:09feeding on the biggest meals our universe can serve up
22:22that's a big difference
22:27astronomers want to know how the earliest supermassive black holes got so big so quickly
22:36could they have started as intermediate mass black holes that devoured supersized meals
22:43it's possible that these intermediate mass black holes could form in an exceptionally rare environment
22:49where it can accrete new material at an enormously higher rate so far we only have direct evidence of one
22:58intermediate mass black hole and we can't yet detect how it eats and grows
23:04but we could look at much larger black holes for clues
23:10in 2019 astronomers searched for supermassive black holes that are actively feeding
23:16so they pinpointed 12 quasars from the beginning of the cosmos
23:22quasars are among the brightest objects we know of in the universe and they're what happens when a
23:27supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy is swallowing up gas and dust and that generates a
23:33tremendous amount of energy and luminosity that we can see surrounding these early galaxies are enormous gas
23:41reservoirs called hydrogen halos this is great because that acts as fuel for those supermassive black
23:48holes cold gas can stream into those black holes and feed them these huge halos of cold gas are also the
23:56building blocks of stars these enormous pristine halos of hydrogen around early galaxies they're going to be
24:04reservoirs to power star formation star formation is a violent process that can create turbulence in a galaxy
24:14that turbulence makes the gas fall toward the black hole and then that makes the black hole even bigger
24:22hydrogen halos might have spoon-fed early supermassive black holes
24:27black holes this process may have also helped intermediate mass black holes grow quickly
24:35could the largest black holes show us other more drastic ways to put on weight
24:43in october 2019 astronomers use telescopes to explore a remarkably clear galaxy called m77
24:52moon because this galaxy is so near to us we can study it central engine in really exquisite detail
24:59at very very fine resolution not only do you see the bright core the bright nucleus but you can see
25:06spiral arms you can see structures in the galaxy you can see how the whole galaxy is arranged
25:14when we examined m77 central supermassive black hole we saw something extraordinary
25:20its food was coming not from one but two accretion discs spinning in opposite directions
25:29normally around a black hole all of the gas is spinning in roughly the same direction and that
25:33creates kind of a slow infall of gas and slow feeding here we've got a case where some of it's
25:38going one way the others going the other way this is very unstable and can create opportunities for
25:44lots of gas to get gobbled up by that black hole
25:46the material in the discs is one enormous ready-to-eat meal but dinner will not be served
25:56until the outer disc slows down if there's a black hole at the center of a galaxy and you're orbiting
26:02around it fast enough to maintain your orbit you're never going to fall in you're just going to orbit
26:08forever and you're just going to spin around just like the way the earth is going around the sun
26:12what needs to happen if you want to fall in is to slow down your speed the outer accretion disc
26:19will gradually slow down and orbit more tightly against the inner disc
26:25dangerous collisions of the counter-rotating material will start to occur
26:30the double accretion disc is like drinking from two soda fountains at the same time it's great while
26:36it lasts but you're building up some serious gas that is just going to blow the whole thing away
26:41in just a few hundred thousand years the double discs will catastrophically collide
26:46and their entire contents will fall into the central supermassive black hole
26:53it will devour everything in one gulp generating a colossal cosmic burp
26:59in february of 2020 in the ophiacus galaxy cluster we saw the damage a cosmic burp can do
27:16the ophiacus galaxy cluster is a collection of a huge number of galaxies all bound together by gravity and
27:23there's gas in between these galaxies and when astronomers looked at that gas in detail what they
27:28found was a huge arcing structure in it that they realized was the edge of a cavity
27:37there is a massive hole in the gas that is over 15 times bigger than the entire milky way galaxy
27:45the size of this bubble is kind of stomping my brain we are talking about a hole in this gas that is
28:00over a million light years wide the burp that created this cavity must have been astoundingly powerful
28:08there are a lot of ideas about this but there's only one that really can explain it and that's a
28:14supermassive black hole a supermassive black hole that suddenly got very greedy
28:21in order to drive an energetic event like this the black hole needs to eat not just one meal it needs to
28:30eat thousands of meals at the exact same time it needs to go to an all-you-can-eat intergalactic buffet
28:40sometime in the distant past this black hole must have had a huge episode of just gorging on material
28:48falling in that got super hot blew out a tremendous amount of material in jets beams that shot out from
28:56the poles of the disc and that's what basically pushed its way out of that gas forming this enormous
29:02cavity the colossal cosmic burp pushed food far away from the supermassive black hole ending its all-you-can-eat
29:11binge and stopping its growth if an intermediate mass black hole was this greedy
29:18it would come to a similar end it's no way to gain weight and become supermassive this is probably
29:26not the way the earliest supermassive black holes grew to such enormous size is there another way
29:32supermassive black holes could have formed in the early universe without having to overeat
29:38maybe black holes smash their way to being giant-sized
29:50so
30:00november 2018
30:03astronomers scanning hundreds of nearby galaxies in infrared light spot something extraordinary
30:10some galaxies had not one supermassive black hole but two
30:18are these pairs a clue to how supermassive black holes in the infant universe
30:25got so big so fast seeing these infrared images showing pairs of supermassive black holes
30:34at the centers of galaxies and showing that this could be very common just is mind-blowing to me
30:41the reason we see pairs of supermassive black holes is because two galaxies merge together
30:48in our picture of how the universe works galaxies start off as smaller galaxies and grow by merging
30:57with other galaxies so they'll be whooshing around each other and tearing each other up
31:03it's actually quite violent when galaxies merge we think their central supermassive black holes
31:10also merge smashing into each other and combining to build a larger black hole galaxy scale mergers can
31:18be one of the most efficient growth mechanisms for supermassive black holes maybe in the early
31:25universe black holes of stellar or intermediate mass merged repeatedly getting heavier and heavier
31:33until they became supermassive
31:35we don't really know how common supermassive black hole mergers were in the early universe but we think
31:43they were more common than they are today because galaxies were closer together it would have taken
31:50millions of mergers to build up the largest supermassive black holes we see today which could have been a tall order
31:58there's another problem too we've never witnessed a supermassive black hole merger in the act we've seen
32:10supermassive black holes on their way to merging and we've seen ones that we think had gone through
32:16mergers but we haven't caught one in the moment as supermassive black holes start merging they spiral
32:23around each other getting faster and faster the closer they get but for them to finally merge together
32:32into a single black hole they need to lose what astronomers call orbital energy the merger of supermassive
32:41black holes means that their orbits have to decay for them to get closer and closer together so in order
32:47for an orbit to decay that orbital energy has to go somewhere to lose energy the merging supermassive
32:54black holes start disrupting the orbits of nearby stars throwing them off their paths so something
33:02small and puny that weighs just one Sun like our own star will often get in the path of these two and
33:09just get rocketed out potentially unbound and flung out of the galaxy entirely each time the
33:17supermassive black holes fling out a star they lose more orbital energy they get closer and closer
33:24but eventually they kicked out all the stars there's nothing left the merger stalls like two sweethearts at a
33:32high school prom the supermassive black holes dance as close as they can but physical contact is not allowed
33:42so these two black holes could end up spiraling around each other for billions and billions of years
33:49this is called the final parsec problem
33:51in 1980 there was a famous paper which addressed this issue that supermassive black holes can only get to
34:02within about one parsec or three light years of each other before they can't merge or they stall
34:10we believe that supermassive black holes must merge we know that galaxies merge and so if the black
34:17holes didn't merge we'd see lots of black holes floating around and we don't there's always one
34:21in the middle so how do they merge in 2019 we found something that appears to solve the final
34:29parsec problem a galaxy in the middle of a merger that contains not two supermassive black holes
34:37but three three supermassive black holes now that's really cool sometimes you can have three galaxies
34:45that are merging together in a galaxy cluster then you have three supermassive black holes at this point
34:52it's virtually impossible for there to be a final parsec problem here's how a third black hole solves the
34:59final parsec problem two of the black holes orbit closer and closer ejecting stars to lose energy
35:07black hole number three joins the action its gravitational pull takes even more energy from the orbiting pair
35:15eventually they lose enough orbital energy to collide that third supermassive black hole is just what's
35:25needed to transfer energy away from the two merging black holes so that they can now merge into one
35:32single supermassive black hole triple black hole events may explain how the earliest supermassive black
35:40holes grew to such enormous size we've suspected that three black holes may be necessary in order to get
35:50black holes to merge but we've never had any evidence for it but now this might provide a direct picture of three
35:59black holes caught in the act itself if we have a picture of this happening now then it certainly happened in
36:08the early universe and might explain how the biggest black holes got so big so quickly final proof will come when we
36:18witness a merger being completed
36:22scientists are also investigating invisible forces at the beginning of the universe did something we can't see boost the
36:30size of the first supermassive black holes
36:33one of the greatest mysteries in cosmology is how the first supermassive black holes got so large so
36:52quickly we suspect mergers could help explain their size and we know all types of black holes can grow by
37:00feeding but we need more clues there's still so much we don't know about the early universe
37:08the further out we look in the universe the less familiar the universe becomes and so the more and more
37:16interesting and new physics you need to involve in order to explain these very strange observations
37:24the puzzle of fast-growing supermassive black holes in the infant universe now takes physicists
37:32somewhere new to the little understood realm of magnetic fields the thing about magnetic fields is they're
37:41hard they're hard to calculate they're hard to understand they're sort of the elephant in the room for
37:45astronomers we know they're there but we'd really rather not talk about them it's only recently that people are
37:52incorporating magnetic fields into their models of galaxy formation and therefore maybe it's under the
37:59influence of these fields that somehow these supermassive black holes are formed to investigate how magnetic
38:06fields influenced early supermassive black holes we must look back at the very beginning soon after the big
38:14bang bang the first particles form cool and become electrically charged things were very different
38:22radically different than they are now particles were whizzing by each other everything was charged it was
38:27just a very different landscape there are no stars yet not even atoms but some scientists think moving
38:35charged particles created the first magnetic fields magnetic fields were essentially everywhere in the early
38:42universe those magnetic fields would have extended extremely large distances like a very finely spun web all
38:50through the early universe gradually atoms form and gather into clouds of gas these will become the first
39:00galaxies and their supermassive black holes during this time magnetic fields change
39:08they bunch together around the forming galaxies but we don't know how the thing with magnetic fields is
39:15they're extremely hard to predict and you need to do really hard calculations that even now we're only just
39:22starting to do 2017 scientists design a groundbreaking computer model that simulates patterns of magnetism
39:32developing over time the images show lines of magnetic force getting stronger and more focused across the vast region of space
39:42some astronomers think these emerging magnetic field lines help shape early galaxies
39:48and the supermassive black holes at their cores magnetic fields have this ability to push material around
39:56so one possibility is they could actually help push or funnel material in towards a growing black hole
40:03and help it grow faster than it would do otherwise in today's universe we know magnetic fields around
40:11planets can deflect dust particles on much larger scales matter may also have been channeled into the centers of
40:20galaxies of the early universe were the magnetic fields of these early galaxies a conduit that you
40:25could get matter dumped more and more into the middle and maybe build up a really big black hole
40:32scientists are just starting to figure out the effects of magnetism at the beginning of the universe
40:38but it could have been one of several mechanisms that influenced the size of early supermassive black holes
40:44we have lots of ideas for how you might be able to form supermassive black holes but until we see
40:53actual mechanisms in action we just can't really say which of them are the most important routes
40:59maybe some other mechanism we haven't even thought of explains how the early supermassive black holes got
41:05so big so fast hopefully one day these monsters of the cosmos will reveal their secrets to
41:14us supermassive black hole research is utterly mind-blowing to me i mean this is so cool it's important to
41:22explain how these early supermassive black holes formed in order to have a really concrete understanding
41:29of how the universe works supermassive black holes are the great engines of cosmic change they're enormous
41:37points of matter and because they're just so massive they can sculpt the evolution of galaxies
41:44they're the master key to most of the unsolved mysteries and physics we have a chance here
41:50to understand supermassive black holes so that we can understand the formation of galaxies the
41:56generation of stars like our sun and maybe even the appearance of life