It was done by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the James Webb Space Telescope. It is a black hole in the growth phase. It is inside a galaxy located 13.2 billion light years from Earth. It was formed just 470 million years after the big bang. Therefore, it is the oldest black hole in the universe discovered so far.
«We needed Webb to find this extraordinarily distant galaxy. And Chandra to find its supermassive black hole. This was said by Akos Bogdan of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who led the work. The galaxy that Bogdan and his team found is called UHZ1. Observations with Chandra revealed intense X-ray emission from gas inside. It is a clear sign of a growing supermassive black hole.
Super massive
Its mass is estimated to be between 10 and 100 million times greater than that of the Sun. It will help understand how black holes can reach colossal masses in such a short time. «There are physical limits to the speed at which black holes can grow once formed. But those who are born more massive have an advantage. It’s like planting a tree instead of a seed,” they say.
The black hole was born massive. Its mass is similar to that of all the stars in the galaxy in which it resides. They usually contain just one tenth of the mass of the stars in their respective galaxies. The black hole most likely formed from the collapse of a huge cloud of gas. The phenomenon is known as an outer black hole, and this particular one could be the first time it has been detected.
Huge discovery
The oldest black hole in the universe is a real first. We will get a broader and more detailed idea of what the universe was like after its creation.
This is one of the most spectacular discoveries of the James Webb Space Telescope. And it is the most distant growing supermassive black hole known. This is what the professor and professor of astrophysical sciences at Princeton, Michael Strauss, concludes. The team’s findings were published in the journal Nature Astronomy.
