The report on the discovery of the oldest black hole in the universe has been peer-reviewed and published in the journal Nature. Thanks to the Space Observatory. James Webb successfully discovered a central black hole with a then-record-breaking mass in the ancient, distant galaxy GN-z11. We don’t yet know how and why this happened, but it appears to require a number of cosmological changes. Galaxy GN-z11 was discovered in 2016 during observations with the Hubble Space Telescope. This object is 13.4 billion light years away from us, meaning it existed just 440 million years after the Big Bang. The launch of the James Webb Infrared Observatory promised many discoveries in the early universe. Because as photons travel through the abyss of time and space, light at this age is stretched so much that it only passes from the visible region into the infrared region. Spectral analysis of the light from GN-z11 revealed the presence of superheated carbon and neon ions. This suggested signs of accretion, the usual heating of matter before it falls into a black hole. The spectral line emission was so powerful that the black hole’s radiation literally dwarfed its parent galaxy. Even though the GN-z11 galaxy is 100 times smaller than the Milky Way, its central black hole attracted 1.6 million solar masses, whereas our galaxy’s central black hole has a solar mass of No wonder it’s 4 million.

Scientists are now convinced of the existence of black holes with masses that were unimaginable at the time, forcing them to rewrite their models and cosmology of the evolution of these objects and the universe itself. Webb doesn’t seem to be stopping there, as this will allow him to collect enough material to create a new model for the emergence and growth of black holes and explain processes in the early universe. For example, based on current theory, the black hole at the center of GN-z11 should be ingesting matter five times faster than we think. Otherwise, it would not have reached detectable mass 440 million years after the Big Bang. Moreover, they were not formed by the collapse of a giant star, but directly by the collapse of interstellar gas that formed after the universe was born. It is believed that the material collected by “Webb” is sufficient to generate new cosmological hypotheses, which can then be developed into a coherent theory.

source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07052-5