Observed! This is the oldest black hole ever discovered →

Webb telescope detects oldest black hole yet

The University of Cambridge in the UK recently issued a communiqué saying that an international team led by researchers from the university used the James Webb Space Telescope in the United States to observe a black hole that can be traced back to about 400 million years after the Big Bang, with a mass several million times that of the sun. This is the oldest black hole discovered so far, and the existence of such a massive black hole at the beginning of the universe poses a challenge to the existing black hole theory.

The communique said that the host galaxy of this black hole is called GN-z11, which is a dense galaxy about one percent the size of the Milky Way. This ancient black hole is violently devouring its host galaxy. When surrounding matter falls into the black hole, part of it will be ejected outward at high speed. This high-speed jet will clear the surrounding gas, thereby inhibiting the formation of stars and the development of the host galaxy. In the process of swallowing the surrounding gas, the black hole will also form a vortex accretion disk. Astronomers detect black holes through the strong light emitted by the accretion disk around the black hole.

According to the standard cosmological model, supermassive black holes are formed from the remains of dead stars, which may form a black hole with a mass of about 100 times that of the sun after collapse. If it grows in the way expected by the model, this newly discovered ancient black hole will take about 1 billion years to "grow" to the size observed by the Webb Space Telescope. However, according to observations, this black hole already existed less than 1 billion years after the birth of the universe.

The bulletin said the size of the newly discovered black hole suggests it may have formed in some other way, making it "inherently large," or that it is swallowing matter several times faster than previously assumed.

The relevant paper has been published in the British journal Nature. Roberto Maiolino, the first author of the paper and professor at the Cavendish Laboratory of the University of Cambridge, said that this discovery benefited from the "huge leap" in the sensitivity of the Webb Space Telescope, especially in infrared observations, which means that even older black holes may be observed in the future. Related research helps to deepen the understanding of the different ways that black holes may be formed.

Source: Xinhua News Agency

Producer: Xu Rui, Cao Xiaoxuan

Editors: Li Ang, Qing Shan