The oldest black hole ever detected, discovered by the James Webb telescope

A team of scientists from the University of Texas at Austin (UT), with the help of the James Webb Space Telescope, announced on Friday the 31st the discovery of an active supermassive black hole that already existed 570 million years after the Big Bang. This is the oldest black hole known to science to date.

The initial aim of the research was to observe the galaxy CEERS_1019 to investigate the primordial light produced by the formation of stars in the early days of the Universe. The first author of the study, Rebecca Larson of UT, was specifically studying the reionization of the universe, the time when matter between galaxies changes from neutral to ionized hydrogen. to initiate the propagation of light.

But a surprise awaited the astronomer when he reviewed his data with an hour of information produced by James Webb: The telescope detected light from an AGN as well as light from star formation, The name of the core of a galaxy with a supermassive black hole at its centre.

A paradoxical discovery

According to research, not yet peer-reviewed and hosted on prepress server arXivAt the dawn of the universe, the light emitted by galaxies usually emits light from a star formation or an AGN, but never from two sources at the same time. This prompted Larson to seek help from some of the experts in these kernels.

Discovering a supermassive black hole in CEERS_1019 prompted researchers to generate some hypotheses. They understand that the object was formed from the collapse of a large object that may have been one of the first stars in the Universe. Like they were much larger than existing ones, its collapse would naturally produce a supermassive object.

Now awaited are more observations by James Webb that can detect even more distant galaxies. “I don’t think my record will last long,” Larson says.