Black Holes Might Not Always Form By Exploding Stars, New Research Concluded

It is a generally accepted truth these days that black holes form by gravitational collapse of massive celestial objects such as stars. But a new study might change this universally acknowledged fact. The evidence is yet to be confirmed, but scientists might have discovered proof that could alter our knowledge in regards to black holes.

Shantanu Basu and Arpan Das, astrophysicists at the University of Western, Ontario, issued a research paper in Astrophysical Journal Letters which declares that black holes are not always the result of a collapse of a star. Instead, some of the black holes develop quite rapidly in a short period, and after that, they stop evolving. The two researchers demonstrate the way black holes appeared at the beginning of the universe. Professor Shantanu Basu declared that “this is indirect observational evidence that black holes originate from direct-collapses and not from stellar remnants.”

This study comes after many years in which scientists didn’t have a definite answer to the question ‘How did supermassive black holes form?’, as we know that for a supermassive black hole to be created, there had to be a star more than twenty times bigger than our Sun. They have always tried to find a definitive solution to it. And Basu and Das might have come with an explanation.

Black Holes Might Not Always Form By Exploding Stars

The two researchers presented, not before coming with evidence, the ‘direct-collapse’ scenario. This scenario indicates that there is a chance that a considerable load of cosmic gas and dust to collapse into a black hole all of a sudden, a black hole more massive than those formed by collapsing stars.

Scientist Ethan Siegel also advocates the creation of black holes by ‘direct-collapse.’ He also explains the stages of black holes creation, from the moment a star collapses, the gas and dust resulted forming new solar systems, to the moment other gas and dust in a nearby zone which also undergoes the same process does not create solar systems but further collapses and forms a black hole.

Astrophysicists have discovered in the last decade supermassive black holes that appeared in the early stages of the creation of the universe, with millions of years earlier than the galaxies. Therefore, these black holes couldn’t have been created by collapsing stars as there weren’t any stars to collapse. The supermassive black holes had a relatively limited period to grow as, with the radiation emitted from the formation of stars and new black holes, their creation stopped.