Webb Telescope Detects Most Distant Active Supermassive Black Hole
Jorge Valasquez
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the successor of the Hubble Space Telescope, has made a remarkable discovery in its first year of operation. It has detected the most distant active supermassive black hole to date, located in a galaxy named CEERS 1019.
The galaxy existed only 570 million years after the big bang, when the universe was less than 5% of its current age. The black hole at its center is less massive than any other yet identified in the early universe, with a mass of about 10 million times that of our sun.
This finding challenges the current models of how supermassive black holes form and grow in the early universe. According to these models, such black holes should be more massive and more rare at such early times, as they need time to accumulate matter and radiation from their surroundings.
However, the discovery of CEERS 1019 suggests that there may be a population of low-mass supermassive black holes that formed through different mechanisms, such as direct collapse of gas clouds or mergers of smaller black holes.
The detection of CEERS 1019 was made possible by the unprecedented sensitivity and resolution of JWST, which can observe infrared light from distant and faint objects that are beyond the reach of other telescopes. JWST also used a technique called gravitational lensing, which magnifies the light from distant sources by bending it around massive foreground objects, such as galaxies or clusters of galaxies.
By using this technique, JWST was able to observe CEERS 1019 with a magnification factor of about 50, making it appear brighter and larger than it would otherwise.
The discovery of CEERS 1019 is just one example of how JWST is opening new windows into the early universe, revealing its mysteries and secrets. JWST will continue to observe CEERS 1019 and other similar galaxies in the future, to learn more about their properties and evolution.
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