Webb Space Telescope Spots Most Distant Black Hole Yet. More May be Lurking

(CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.) — Astronomers have discovered the most distant black hole yet using the Webb Space Telescope, but that record isn’t expected to last. The black hole is at the center of a galaxy dating to within a mere 570 million years of the Big Bang. That’s 100 million years closer to the beginning of the cosmos than a black hole observed in 2021 with a telescope in Chile led by a Chinese team. Webb already has spotted other black holes that appear to be even closer to the Big Bang nearly 14 billion years ago, but those findings are still under review, said University of Texas at Austin astronomer Steven Finkelstein, one of the lead researchers. The finding has been accepted for publication by the Astrophysical Journal Letters. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Because the signals from this particular black hole are weak, more observations are needed, according to the Texas-led team. Read more: Innovator of the Year: Gregory Robinson and the James Webb Telescope There are untold numbers of dormant black holes, some even more distant than this one. But without any glowing gas, they are invisible, Finkelstein said. This particular one is active and actually puny as black holes go — equivalent to about 9 million times the mass of our sun. That’s close in size to the one in our own Milky Way galaxy, according to the team. Using Webb, the team also spotted two other small black holes from the early universe, dating to around 1 bill...
Source: TIME: Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Uncategorized healthscienceclimate Space wire Source Type: news