NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory astronomers have just discovered the most distant black hole ever observed via X-ray telescope. The James Webb Space Telescope spotted this relative youngster, which formed “only” 470 million years subsequent to the big bang, according to NASA’s official website.
The light from the galaxy and the X-rays from the plasma surrounding its supermassive black hole needed to be magnified by a factor of four due to intervening matter and gravitational lensing in Abell 2744, therefore increasing Webb’s infrared signal and enabling Chandra’s technicians to discover the weak X-ray source.
Andy Goulding of Princeton University provided some background on the discovery, reporting, “There are physical limits on how quickly black holes can grow once they’ve formed, but ones that are born more massive have a head start. It’s like planting a sapling, which takes less time to grow into a full-sized tree than if you started with only a seed.”
Akos Bogdan of the Center for Astrophysics identified significant evidence that the newly detected black hole was born large. Based on the brightness and intensity of its X-rays, its mass is estimated to lie somewhere between 10 and 100 million times that of the sun.
This mass range is comparable to that of all the stars in the galaxy in which it resides–in contrast to black holes at the cores of galaxies in the local universe–which typically contain just 0.1% of the total mass of the stars in their host galaxy.
The black hole’s impressive mass at such a young age–as well as the number of X-rays it emits and the brightness of the galaxy detected by the Webb telescope–all coincide with theoretical predictions made in 2017 by co-author Priyamvada Natarajan of Yale University, who theorized that an “outsize black hole” formed directly from the collapse of a massive gaseous cloud.
The researchers intend to utilize these and other Webb discoveries–as well as those integrating data from other observatories—in order to compile a more detailed picture of the early cosmos.
The Hubble Space Telescope previously demonstrated that light from distant galaxies is greatly amplified by materials in the intervening galaxy cluster, which provided inspiration for the Webb and Chandra discoveries detailed here.
The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s leading observatory for space science. The scope is currently investigating the many mysteries of our solar system–as well as those of distant planets orbiting other stars–while delving into the unfathomable composition of our universe’s origins and our ability to make sense of it. Webb is a NASA-led multilateral effort which partners with ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency.