The oldest and farthest black hole, a giant that most likely created almost 13 billion years ago at the beginning of the universe, has been found by astronomers.
The black hole is located at the core of the CAPERS-LRD-z9 galaxy. It is estimated that these celestial objects formed approximately 13.3 billion years ago, which is only 500 million years after the universe’s big bang. (According to the big bang theory, the universe began as an enormously hot and dense point that rapidly expanded outward in all directions some 13.8 billion years ago.)
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According to a study published Wednesday in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, the black hole discovery may help explain the origins of the universe and the evolution of galaxies and black holes.
According to Anthony Taylor, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Texas in Austin who oversaw the study’s global team of scientists, “observing distant objects in the cosmos is a bit like accessing a portal back in time because light takes time to travel across space.”
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“It takes billions and billions of years for light to reach us when we look at objects that are very, very far away,” he remarked. Therefore, these objects are actually being seen as they were in the early cosmos.
According to the researchers, this is a massive black hole. It is thought to have a mass equal to half of the stars in its galaxy and to be up to 300 million times larger than the sun.
According to Taylor, it is also around ten times as large as the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy.
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Using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to observe the universe’s furthest regions, Taylor and his associates discovered the black hole. The researchers employed a method called spectroscopy, which divides light into various hues and wavelengths, just like a prism divides sunlight into rainbow colors.
Astronomers can search for telltale evidence of stars, galaxies, and other celestial objects using spectroscopy.The material is compressed and heated as it swirls around and falls into the black hole after being ingested by the black hole. According to research co-author Steven Finkelstein, an astronomy professor at the University of Texas at Austin, spectroscopy may show all of that.
According to Finkelstein, we search for these indicators of extremely fast-moving gas. We are discussing speeds of 1,000, 2,000, and occasionally even 3,000 kilometers per second. We know it must be gas surrounding a black hole because nothing else in the universe moves that quickly.
“This is the oldest black hole candidate confirmed by spectroscopy, but scientists have found other, more distant ones,” he said.
According to the astronomers, the galaxy that contains the recently discovered black hole is also an intriguing discovery. According to Taylor, it belongs to a family of galaxies known as Little Red Dots because they are incredibly small and surprisingly bright, and they emit red wavelengths of light.
The James Webb Space Telescope was the first to detect nothing Red Dots, although nothing is known about them yet. According to Finkelstein, they were probably more prevalent in the early cosmos, even if some have been observed very close.
According to the researchers, studying the CAPERS-LRD-z9 galaxy may provide hints regarding the origins of Little Red Dots and the factors that give them their characteristic red hue. It might also offer hints as to how a black hole so old got so big so early in the history of the universe.
In subsequent investigations, the scientists hope to discover additional black holes that are as old, if not older, in the far-off cosmos.
According to Finkelstein, the James Webb Space Telescope is only ever used to survey extremely small regions of the sky. Therefore, there must be a lot more out there if we locate one thing.
