James Webb Telescope discovers oldest black hole ever observed

International team led by the University of Cambridge discovered the oldest black hole this has never been observed. Among other things, they discovered that this black hole is “eating” its galaxy to death.

In their work, the team used James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) NASA/ESA/CSA for detection black hole. This way they were able to analyze which dates date back to 400 million years after the Big Bang, more than 13 billion years ago. Lead author Roberto Maiolino calls the results “a big step forward.” They were published in the journal Nature.

The fact that it is amazingly massive black hole (several million times the mass of our Sun) exists so early in the Universe that it challenges assumptions about how black holes form and grow.

Astronomers believe that supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies such as the Milky Way have grown to their current sizes over billions of years. Now, the size of this newly discovered black hole suggests they could have formed in other ways: they could have been “born big” or they could have been eating matter at a rate five times faster than thought possible.

Standard models show that supermassive black holes are formed. from the remains of dead stars

which are destroyed and have the ability to form black hole is about a hundred times more massive than the Sun. If it had grown as expected, this newly discovered black hole It would take about a billion years to grow to observable sizes.. However, the Universe was not yet a billion years old when this black hole was discovered.

Like all black holes, this young black hole absorbs material from its parent galaxy, fueling its growth. However, the ancient black hole is found to be devouring matter more than its counterparts from more recent times.

galaxy The host galaxy, called GN-z11, is a compact galaxy about a hundred times smaller than Milky Way, although the black hole would likely harm its development. When black holes consume too much gas, they eject it in a superfast wind that can stop the star formation process, slowly killing the galaxy and the black hole itself as it also cuts off the hole’s “food”. source black.