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Space

Webb Detects Most Distant Active Supermassive Black Hole to Date - and It's Small (cnn.com) 26

Posted by EditorDavid from the tell-a-telescope dept.
"The James Webb Space Telescope has delivered yet another astounding discovery," reports CNN, "spying an active supermassive black hole deeper into the universe than has ever been recorded." The black hole lies within CEERS 1019 — an extremely old galaxy likely formed 570 million years after the big bang — making it more than 13 billion years old. And scientists were perplexed to find just how small the celestial object's central black hole measures. "This black hole clocks in at about 9 million solar masses," according to a NASA news release. A solar mass is a unit equivalent to the mass of the sun in our home solar system — which is about 333,000 times larger than the Earth. That's "far less than other black holes that also existed in the early universe and were detected by other telescopes," according to NASA. "Those behemoths typically contain more than 1 billion times the mass of the Sun — and they are easier to detect because they are much brighter."

The ability to bring such a dim, distant black hole into focus is a key feature of the Webb telescope, which uses highly sensitive instruments to detect otherwise invisible light...

The relative smallness of the black hole at CEER 1019's center is a mystery for scientists. It's not yet clear how such a small black hole formed in the early days of the universe, which was known to produce much larger gravity wells.
NASA's announcement emphasized the power of the James Webb Space Telescope. "Not only could the team untangle which emissions in the spectrum are from the black hole and which are from its host galaxy, they could also pinpoint how much gas the black hole is ingesting and determine its galaxy's star-formation rate."

The survey also recorded evidence of eleven new galaxies — which are still "churning out new stars," according to NASA. A member of the team says these new galaxies, "along with other distant galaxies we may identify in the future, might change our understanding of star formation and galaxy evolution throughout cosmic history."
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Webb Detects Most Distant Active Supermassive Black Hole to Date - and It's Small More

Webb Detects Most Distant Active Supermassive Black Hole to Date - and It's Small

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  • 13 billion? Is that old anymore? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by NMBob ( 772954 ) on Sunday July 16, 2023 @04:27PM (#63690935) Homepage
    I thought they just announced the Universe may be about twice as old as we thought?

  • What does "active" mean? (Score:3)

    by larryjoe ( 135075 ) on Sunday July 16, 2023 @08:21PM (#63691319)

    The light showing the active black hole has traveled over 13.2 billion light-years. So, this black hole was active 13.2 billion years ago. Whether it is currently active or exists is something that earth instruments will be able to determine in about 13.2 billions years from now.

    • What's really mind bending is that at these distances, it isn't clear that a simultaneous "now" is well-defined.
    • Except "Earth" will stop existing in about 4bn years and in 5bn we are scheduled for Andromeda collision which could majorly impact the whole solar system. There won't be anybody looking in that direction by the time this light gets "here".
      • i thought that current theory had the Andromeda collision doing virtually no damage to our solar system? https://twitter.com/NASA/statu... [twitter.com]
        • It's extremely unlikely the collision with Andromeda galaxy will do anything to the solar system other than change the appearance of stars in the night sky; the main cause for concern will be the Sun turning into a red giant in some 5-6 billion years; in doing so it will engulf Earth, and maybe even Mars. So Earth still won't be around for that estimated 13.2 billion years to see what happened.
          • yeah, that red giant thing and earth being burnt to a cinder, that's going to ruin my day... And is one reason why the humans really should consider finding a way to become a spacefaring species. Imagine life on Ganymede or Titan! Wouldn't that be beautiful? Yes, there are hurdles to voercome in both those cases, yet, if we have made it that far, we would definitely have addressed those issues by then.

  • What precisely makes it "active" as opposed to inactive?

    And calling it "supermassive" is actually kind of contrary to the point of the story (that it's surprisingly small), no?

    • What precisely makes it "active" as opposed to inactive?

      "They are actively “eating” matter, which lights up as it swirls toward the black hole."

      And calling it "supermassive" is actually kind of contrary to the point of the story (that it's surprisingly small), no?

      No, because it's still a "supermassive" black hole which just means it's much larger than a normal stellar-sized blackhole (a blackhole resulting from a single star).
      "The black hole within CEERS 1019 is more similar to the black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy" which still makes it a "supermassive" black hole, just not nearly as large as the one's we've seen before at that age & distance.

      https: [nasa.gov]

      • So there are 'inactive' black holes, then? That's my point - all black holes are 'actively eating matter'.
        It's like saying someone is a non-incandescent human - sort of fundamentally redundant because it's sort of assumed by the noun.

        And good point on the supermassive, understood - thanks.

  • Can't they get terminology right for once. Distance isn't age. We know nothing about the current state of the galaxy.
    If anything it's a baby galaxy we're seeing today. Like looking at a photo of a baby that was taken at the birth of photography. We're not seeing an old person, we're seeing a baby from a long time ago.

    And that it's low on solar masses isn't that difficult to imagine, it just haven't had time to splurge on all those tasty-looking nearby stars yet...

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