Researchers may have discovered the oldest known black hole in the universe using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).
The discovery was first published online but has yet to be peer-reviewed.
This supermassive black hole is believed to have been around during the “cosmic dawn,” a period of time 100 million years after the Big Bang when many of the first galaxies and black holes formed. The researchers are dating their find at roughly 570 million years after the Big Bang, which occurred 13.8 billion years ago.
University of Texas astrophysicist Rebecca Larson, the lead author of the study detailing the discovery, lauded the JWST’s capabilities in an interview with Science Alert.
“In the moment I was kind of like, wow look at everything we can see with JWST, we’ve seen this whole portion of the spectrum of this galaxy — and any galaxies early on in the Universe — we’ve never seen before. I was just overwhelmed by the amount of information,” Larson said.
The JWST has the unique capability to observe some of the universe’s earliest stages, enabling astronomers to examine this cosmic dawn in greater depth. As previously reported in The Dallas Express, the JWST was used earlier this year to detect six massive undiscovered galaxies.
While Larson’s discovery now holds the record for the oldest known black hole, researchers in Europe recently located the one closest to our galaxy using the Gaia space telescope. It is only 1,560 light-years away, a relatively close distance, the National Post reported.
Despite these recent discoveries, scientists are still uncertain why so many black holes were created during the cosmic dawn and how they grew to such a massive size.
Larson told Science Alert that she is very excited about the potential for more discoveries using the JWST and how they can better inform scientists like herself about the origins of the universe and the various cosmic bodies that inhabit it.
“I don’t think my record will stand for long,” Larson said. “And I hope it doesn’t, because I think that that’s more exciting, that we’re starting to answer these questions.”