astronomers who use James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has discovered the most distant and most active supermassive black hole ever observed. The black hole also happens to be one of the two least massive ones seen in the early universe – measuring out to the equivalent of about 9 million suns – which proves difficult to explain.
Researchers observed that the galaxy hosts this active supermassive black hole as part of the Cosmic Evolutionary Evolutionary Survey (CEERS) scientific survey. The galaxy, designated CEERS 1019, is seen as it was when the universe was 13.8 billion years old, about 570 million years.
He leads the astronomy team at the University of Texas at Austin Stephen FinkelsteinI also spotted two more black holes Which existed between 1 and 1.1 billion years after the Big Bang, in addition to 11 galaxies that existed between 470 and 675 million years in cosmic history.
Finkelstein said in a statement. “With Webb, we can not only see black holes and galaxies at great distances, we can now begin to measure them precisely. That’s the enormous power of this telescope.”
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The team’s findings, which represent the first results from CEERS, were published in May in several papers in a special issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Greedy little black hole
The black hole at the heart of CEERS 1019 has a mass of about 9 million solar masses. This may sound very massive, but many supermassive black holes can grow to be billions of times the mass of our star. However, even at this relatively small size, the existence of black holes of these masses in the early universe remains a mystery to scientists.
This is because the processes by which supermassive black holes grow, either via mergers between larger black holes or by greedily feasting on surrounding matter, must have taken longer than the 570 million years this black hole had to work with. This means that even black holes are on a scale of that In the heart of the Milky Waywhich has a mass of about 4.5 million times that of the Sun, should only be seen in the relatively nearby, and therefore more recent, universe.
Related: What is the largest black hole in the universe?
“Looking at this distant object with this telescope is very similar to looking at data from black holes found in galaxies close to our own,” said a co-author of the study. Rebecca Larsona doctoral student at the University of Texas at Austin, said in the statement.
Scientists have long suspected that such supermassive black holes existed in the early universe, but this has only happened since James Webb’s space age. She opened her infrared eye on the universe In the middle of 2022, hard evidence emerges.
The light emissions reveal that the CEERS 1019 black hole is actively feeding on matter around it. Feeding black holes like these are surrounded by swirls of infalling gas and dust known as accretion disks. Not only does the black hole’s gravitational effect heat this material, causing the disk to glow brightly, but powerful magnetic fields drive the material toward the black hole’s poles, where it sometimes explodes in twin jets moving nearby. The speed of lightto generate intensely bright light.
Observing a black hole’s intense radiation can reveal how fast its host galaxy is growing, and perhaps provide insights into its mysterious past.
“Mergers of galaxies may be partly responsible for fueling activity in this galaxy’s black hole, and this may also lead to increased star formation,” said a co-author of the study. Cihan Kartaltepesaid a CEERS team member and associate professor of astronomy at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York.
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