NASA identified a supermassive black hole, 13.2 billion years old, ten times larger than the Milky Way. This ancient black hole formed around 470 million years after the Big Bang, reshaping our understanding of these cosmic giants.
Scientists Find Oldest Ever Black Hole While Trying To Criticise Distant Galaxy
Scientists believe they have discovered the oldest known black hole.
The astounding finding was achieved by NASA while they were utilizing two of its space telescopes, Chandra and JWST, to examine a far-off galaxy.
Let's define a black hole before moving on. I know, it seems strange, but many of us grew up believing we would all be pulled into this thing in space (it was a true worry, ok).
"Great amount of matter packed into a very small area" and a gravitational field so intense that "nothing, not even light, can escape" are the characteristics of a black hole, according to NASA.
The objects come in two varieties: supermassive and stellar-massive.
Massive stars Black holes are found all around the Milky Way galaxy and range in mass from three to dozens of times that of the Sun.
On the other hand, supermassive boys, who are located in the centers of large galaxies like our own, weigh between 100,000 and billions of solar masses.
The mass of this recently found supermassive whopper black hole is approximately equal to the total mass of all the stars in its galaxy.
Lead author of the new article Akos Bogdan called this "absolutely crazy," as reported by The Washington Post.
That is undoubtedly one way to phrase it.
It is believed to be the oldest one that NASA has found to date, having formed some 470 million years after the Big Bang.
Scientists have calculated the age of the black hole, which is detected in X-rays from observatories, to be 13.2 billion years.
They have calculated this and believe that the universe started 13.7 billion years ago.
The black hole, which was found in the galaxy known as UHZ1, is ten times larger than the Milky Way's (14.6 million-mile diameter).
This discovery may also contribute to the ongoing discussion over the genesis of supermassive black holes, as there are two opposing views among theorists: the light seed theory and the heavy seed theory.
According to the light seed theory, a star will eventually develop into the supermassive state after collapsing into a stellar-mass black hole.
However, according to the heavy seed theory, a large cloud of gas rather than a single star collapses, resulting in the formation of a black hole of a supermassive size.
Bogdan said: “In this case, we can say with certainty that the black hole came from a heavy seed, it is a pretty big deal.”
However since this is limited to data from a single galaxy, it is not sufficient to settle the entire controversy by itself.
In any case, the black hole that has to be found is a quite large and ancient one.