Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have discovered a feeding supermassive black hole from when the universe was less than 600 million years old.
Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have detected the most distant, actively-feeding supermassive black hole ever observed. The black hole also happens to be one of the least massive seen in the early universe — measuring the equivalent of about 9 million suns — which is proving challenging to explain.
"Until now, research about objects in the early universe was largely theoretical," Finkelstein said in a statement."With Webb, not only can we see black holes and galaxies at extreme distances, we can now start to accurately measure them. That's the tremendous power of this telescope."The team's results, which represent the first findings from CEERS, were published in May in several papers in a special edition of the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Scientists have long suspected that such supermassive black holes existed in the early universe, but it is only since the JWST opened its infrared eye to the cosmos in mid-2022 that definite proof has emerged.
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