April 5, 2023, 9:53 PM
April 5, 2023, 9:53 PM
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has Discovered the oldest black hole in the Universe ever found, as detailed in a study available on the arXiv site for prepublications of scientific articles.
According to the authors of the report, this huge astronomical object, which has a mass of 10 million times larger than the Sun, it is at the center of a “baby galaxy” called CEERS_1019, which originated 570 million years after the beginning of the Universe.
“This is the first (black hole) that we found at this redshift (point in time after the Big Bang), but there should be many of them”, cThe study’s lead author, Rebecca Larson, an astrophysicist at the University of Texas, told Live Science.
The unknown about its formation
It is still not very clear how black holes formed in the early Universe. But the recent find could help astronomers better understand their existence and how they accelerated their growth during the so-called cosmic dawn, a period that includes about 100 million years after the Big Bang occurred.
“We didn’t know and we still don’t know how the black holes of those (first) galaxies came to be be so massive, so early in the Universe”Larson told Science Alert.
Hope in finding new, older black holes
The researchers believe that the newly identified object formed from the collapse of a massive object, such as one of the first stars in the Universe. These stars were much larger than today’s, so the black hole resulting from such a collapse would have an advantage on its way to supermassiveness.
For this very reason, astronomers hope to find space objects of this type that are even older: “We are beginning to be able to study this moment in cosmic history in this way with the JWST, and I am excited that we will find more” black holes, added the astrophysicist.
A record that probably won’t last long.
With the new observations and discoveries from JWST, it is very likely that the age record for this black hole will not last for long.
“I don’t think my record will stand for long.. And I hope that’s not the case, because I think that’s more exciting, that we’re starting to answer these questions,” the author concluded.
