According to a report on the website of the British “New Scientist” magazine on March 30, American scientists used the James Webb Space Telescope to discover the oldest known black hole so far. This black hole was formed 570 million years after the Big Bang. This discovery can help People understand the origin and evolution of cosmic “monsters” such as black holes.
Many galaxies host a supermassive black hole at their center, but scientists don’t yet know how these black holes get so massive. One possibility is that they formed from small black holes created by the collapse of early stars, which coalesced over time to form a single supermassive black hole. Another theory is that they formed from the direct collapse of vast amounts of gas in the early universe.
In a new study, Rebecca Larson of the University of Texas at Austin and her colleagues have identified the earliest black hole to date, which they believe was born 570 million years after the Big Bang, based on its distance from Earth. In addition, studies have shown that this black hole has a mass 10 million times that of the sun.
Larsen pointed out that this is a very important unknown area for the formation and growth of black holes in the early universe, and the latest research will help scientists reveal the reasons for the formation of such black holes.
To identify the black hole, Larsen’s team used the Webb telescope to observe a galaxy that Hubble had previously identified as the brightest known galaxy in the early universe, but Hubble has been unable to tell what’s inside the galaxy. Using two cameras and two spectroscopes, the Webb telescope was able to resolve the different components of the light signal from the galaxy, which led to the discovery of the black hole.
James Mulaney of the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom said the black hole’s mass seemed to suggest that it did not evolve from a stellar-mass black hole. Relevant research has been submitted to the paper preprint website.