- 4088 - OLDEST BLACKHOLE -
James Webb telescope discovers the oldest active black hole in the known
universe. Astronomers have discovered a
feeding supermassive black hole from when the universe was less than 600
million years old.
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--------------------- 4088 - OLDEST BLACKHOLE ?
- This backhole is
the most distant, actively-feeding supermassive black hole ever observed. The
black hole also happens to be one of the least massive seen in the early
universe, measuring the equivalent of about 9 million suns, which is proving
challenging to explain.
-
- Researchers observed
the galaxy hosting this active supermassive black hole as part of the Cosmic
Evolution Early Release Science (CEERS) Survey. Designated CEERS 1019, the
galaxy is seen as it was when the 13.8 billion-year-old universe was just
around 570 million years old.
-
- They also spotted
two other black holes that existed 1.0 and 1.1 billion years after the Big
Bang, as well as 11 galaxies that existed between 470 million and 675 million
years into cosmic history.
-
- Not only can we
see black holes and galaxies at extreme distances, we can now start to
accurately measure them. The black hole
at the heart of CEERS 1019 is around 9 million solar masses. This may sound
tremendously massive, but many supermassive black holes can grow to have
billions of times the mass of our star.
Even at this relatively small size, the existence of black holes of such
masses in the early universe is still a puzzle for scientists.
-
- This is because
the processes by which supermassive black holes grow, either by mergers between
successively larger black holes or by greedily feasting on surrounding matter,
should take longer than the 570 million years this black hole had to work with.
-
- This means that
even black holes on a scale of that at the heart of the Milky Way, which has
around 4.5 million times the mass of the sun, should only be seen in the
relatively close, and thus more recent, universe.
-
- Scientists have
long suspected that such supermassive black holes existed in the early
universe, but it is only since the JWST opened its infrared eye to the cosmos
in mid-2022 that definite proof has emerged.
Light emissions reveal that black hole CEERS 1019 is actively feeding on
matter around it. Feeding black holes like this one are surrounded by swirls of
infalling gas and dust known as accretion disks.
-
- Not only does the
gravitational influence of the black hole heat this matter, causing the disk to
glow brightly, but powerful magnetic fields channel matter to the poles of the
black hole, where it is occasionally blasted out in twin jets moving at near
light-speed, generating intensely bright light.
-
- Further observing
the black hole’s intense radiation could reveal how quickly its host galaxy is
growing, and possibly shed insights on its mysterious past. A galaxy merger could be partly responsible
for fueling the activity in this galaxy's black hole, and that could also lead
to increased star formation.
-
-
July 12, 2023 OLDEST
BLACKHOLE
4088
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Wednesday, July 12, 2023 ---------------------------------
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