1706353999
CNN Indonesia
Thursday, January 25, 2024, 5:03 p.m. IWST
Illustration. Experts have discovered the most distant black hole to date. (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center/Jeremy Schnittman)
Jakarta, CNN Indonesia —
James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) managed to find black hole or the oldest and most distant black hole with a mass of 1.6 million suns, 13 billion light-years away out of Earth.
JWST, whose cameras allow a look back in time to the beginning of the universe, discovered a supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy GN-z11, just 440 million years from the origin of the universe.
This black hole is not alone. It is one of the many black holes that have engulfed themselves to a frightening extent during the cosmic dawn.
About 100 million years after the Big Bang, when the young universe began to glow for a billion years.
It is still unclear how the cosmic vortex expanded so quickly after the universe was formed. But the search for answers could help explain how today’s supermassive black holes reach such enormous sizes.
The researchers published their results on January 17 in the journal Nature.
“[Lubang hitam di alam semesta awal] “They cannot grow as quietly and gently as many black holes in the (current) local universe,” lead author Roberto Maiolino, professor of astrophysics at the University of Cambridge, is quoted as saying LiveScience.
“They (black holes) must undergo a strange birth or formation and growth,” he added.
Today, astronomers believe that black holes are formed by the collapse of giant stars. However, regardless of how they form, black holes grow by continually devouring gas, dust, stars, and other black holes.
When they gather, the rotating material in the belly of the black hole heats up through friction and they emit light that can be detected by telescopes, turning it into what is known as an active galactic nucleus (AGN).
The most extreme AGNs are quasars, supermassive black holes that are billions of times heavier than the Sun and release their gas cocoons in bursts of light trillions of times brighter than the brightest stars.
Because light travels at a constant speed through the vacuum of space, the deeper scientists look into the universe, the further into the past they can look.
To find the black holes in this new study, astronomers scanned the sky with two infrared cameras, namely JWST’s Mid Infrared Instrument (MIRI) and Near Infrared Camera.
In addition, the team used the spectrograph in the camera to break down light into its component frequencies.
By deconstructing faint flashes from the early years of the universe, astronomers discovered unexpected spikes in the frequencies contained in light.
This is an important sign that the hot material around the black hole is sending faint trails of light into the universe.
The most popular explanation for why black holes grow so quickly is that they are formed by the sudden collapse of huge clouds of gas. Alternatively, black holes are formed by the merger of several star clusters and black holes.
(lom/arh)
#James #Webb #breaks #record #discovering #oldest #distant #black #hole