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NASA telescopes have made a groundbreaking discovery, detecting the oldest and most distant black hole ever found in the universe.
The discovery was made using data collected by the Chandra X-ray Observatory and James Webb Space Telescope, revealing the presence of a growing black hole just 470 million years after the big bang 13.8 billion years ago.
Published in the journal Nature Astronomy, the discovery sheds light on the earliest formation of supermassive black holes in the universe. “We needed Webb to find this remarkably distant galaxy and Chandra to find its supermassive black hole,” said lead study author, Akos Bogdan, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Using an effect called gravitational lensing, astronomers detected the black hole in a galaxy called UHZ1, located 13.2 billion light-years from Earth. The discovery has provided crucial insights into the cosmic evolution of black holes, offering clues on their formation and growth in the early universe.
The incredible findings have led astronomers to ponder the origins of supermassive black holes. “There are physical limits on how quickly black holes can grow once they’ve formed, but ones that are born more massive have a head start,” said Andy Goulding, a research scholar in astrophysical sciences at Princeton University.
Furthermore, the recent discovery could also provide evidence for a groundbreaking black hole theory proposed by Priyamvada Natarajan, a professor of astronomy and physics at Yale University. This discovery could be the first detection of an “Outsize Black Hole,” supporting the theory that some black holes form from massive clouds of gas.
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