They discover the oldest black hole in the universe: “It’s a big step forward”

A group of astronomers led by the University of Cambridge discovered the oldest black hole ever observed, which dates back to the dawn of the universe 13 billion years ago, as published in the journal Nature. To do this, they used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope.

Their technology allowed them to analyze what dates back 400 million years after the Big Bang, more than 13 billion years agoin which for the main author, prof Roberto Maiolinoconstitutes “a big step forward”.

The fact that this astonishingly massive black hole (a few million times the mass of our Sun) exists so early in the universe calls into question assumptions about how black holes form and grow, according to a dpa cable.

How do black holes form?

Astronomers believe that supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies like the Milky Way grew to their current size over billions of years.

But the size of this newly discovered black hole suggests that they could form in other ways: they could be “born big,” or they could eat matter at a rate five times faster than previously thought possible.

According to standard models, Supermassive black holes form from the remains of dead starswhich collapse and can form a black hole about a hundred times the mass of the Sun. If it grew as expected, this newly detected black hole would take about a billion years to reach the observed size.

However, the universe was not yet a billion years old when this black hole was detected.

The young host galaxy, called GN-z11, is a compact galaxy, about a hundred times smaller than the Milky Way, but the black hole is probably hindering its development.

When black holes consume too much gas, they push it around like an ultrafast wind. This “wind” could stop the star formation process, slowly killing the galaxy, but it would also kill the black hole itself, as it would also cut off the black hole’s “food” source.

Maiolino says that JWST’s sensitivity means that even older black holes could be found in the coming months and years.

The scientist and his team hope to use future JWST observations to try to find smaller “seeds” of black holes, which could help them tease out the different ways black holes might form: whether they start out large or grow quickly.

Source: EFE

Since NASA was a trend in Google Trends (as shown by the graph), the news of the James Webb black hole discovery gained prominence.

The Jan. 18 trend showed spikes in interest in 2024 space projects.