NASA’s James Webb discovers oldest supermassive black hole in distant galaxy

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) discovered a 13.2 billion-year-old supermassive black that could change our understanding of the early universe.

Scientists are also baffled by how the black hole formed so soon after the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago, when most cavities appeared a billion years ago.

The massive abyss, the oldest ever discovered, lies at the center of the CEERS 1019 system and dates back 570 million years after the birth of the universe.

A team led by the University of Texas at Austin determined that the gigantic abyss is on the brink nine million times the mass of our sun and still growing – it smacks of surrounding interstellar gas and dust.

The previous container of the oldest supermassive black hole was discovered in 2021 and formed 13 billion years ago.

JWST has outlived its reputation since launching in 2021 on a quest to understand the universe and our origins by exploring every phase of cosmic history.

The NASA telescope has uncovered the oldest galaxy in the universe and ancient planets that should not exist due to their age.

And now JWST can add the oldest black hole to its list of discoveries.

Scientists were in the midst of the Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science (CEERS) Survey led by Steven Finkelstein when they received data on the vast void.

The black hole in CEERS 1019 is more similar to the black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy, which has 4.6 million times the mass of the Sun.

However, it is also much smaller than most, clocking in at over a billion times its mass.

Black holes form when the center of a very massive star collapses on itself, leaving behind a vacuum where no light enters or escapes.

The project also revealed two more black holes in the CEERS 746 and CEERS 2782 galaxies, which are slightly larger and weigh 10 million times the mass of the Sun.

Astronomers call the trio the CEERS “lightweights,” and believe they could reshape our understanding of how supermassive black holes formed and grew during the universe’s first billion years.

The project also revealed two more black holes in galaxies CEERS 746 and CEERS 2782, which are slightly larger and weigh 10 million times the mass of the Sun.

“This is critical because during this period, known as the Age of Reionization, the universe was shrouded in a dense ‘fog,'” researchers shared in a press release.

At this point in the universe, neutral gas was ionized over hundreds of millions of years, making it transparent to ultraviolet light.

What led to this period is unclear, though astronomers hope JWST will be able to answer it.

Dale Kocevski of Colby College in Waterville, Maine, said: ‘Researchers have long known that there must be lower mass black holes in the early universe.

“Webb is the first observatory to capture them so clearly.

“Now we think lower-mass black holes could be everywhere, waiting to be discovered.”

“Before Webb, all three black holes were too faint to be detected. “With other telescopes, these targets look like regular star-forming galaxies, not active supermassive black holes,” Finkelstein added.

This was possible thanks to JWST’s sensitive spectra that allowed researchers to accurately measure distances to, and therefore the ages of, galaxies in the early universe.

“Until now, research on objects in the early universe has been largely theoretical,” said Finkelstein.

‘With Webb we can not only see black holes and galaxies at extreme distances, we can now also measure them accurately. That is the enormous power of this telescope