Title: Monster Black Hole from Early Universe Discovered by NASA
In a groundbreaking discovery, NASA has identified a monstrous black hole that emerged approximately 800 million years after the Big Bang. This ancient cosmic giant, inactive but colossal, was found using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).
Dubbed a ‘monster’ due to its colossal size, this black hole weighs in at around 400 million times the mass of our Sun. It is the most massive black hole ever detected by JWST in the early universe. The discovery, published in the journal Nature, adds a new layer of complexity to the mystery of how supermassive black holes form and grow so rapidly in the early universe.
なんでBlack holes are typically found in the local universe and are much younger, with masses around 0.1% of their host galaxies. However, this supermassive black hole has a mass equivalent to about 40% of its host galaxy’s mass. Astronomers suspect that black holes like this one grow by greedily consuming gas, but this specific black hole was lapping up gas at a leisurely pace, only about 1% of the maximum rate possible for an object of its size.
Since black holes have an event horizon, a point of no return from which not even light can escape, they typically remain hidden unless they are actively consuming matter. When a supermassive black hole is surrounded by a flatten disk of gas and dust called an accretion disk, the immense gravitational forces cause friction, heating up the material and making the black hole glow. This emission allows us to detect supermassive black holes.
However, this particular supermassive black hole behaves differently. Despite its massive size, it isn’t actively consuming matter. But its sheer mass creates such a strong gravitational pull that it can still be detected. "Even though this black hole is inactive, its enormous size allows us to detect it," says Ignas Jodžbalis, the lead researcher from the Kavli Institute for Cosmology, University of Cambridge, England. "Its inactive state also lets us study the mass of its host galaxy. The early universe managed to produce some absolutely monstrous objects, even in relatively small galaxies," he adds.