![]() But the black hole at the center of is just starting to peek above that hydrogen emission. ![]() "What's interesting about this black hole is that it's not the brightest thing in its galaxy," Larson said. (Courthouse News via NASA, ESA, CSA and Leah Hustak of the Space Telescope Science Institute) The CEERS galaxies' supermassive black holes are generally less massive than those found by other telescopes it took the James Webb Space Telescope's infrared imaging capabilities to detect the very ancient CEERS 1019 black hole. Larson said it only added to the object's intrigue. The black hole at the center of CEERS 1019 is not nearly so bright, and it took the James Webb Telescope's infrared imaging devices for scientists to detect it. Some accretion disk matter moves so fast that it manages to slingshot away from the black hole before reaching the event horizon, forming jets of luminous gas and dust that can stretch for thousands of light years. The most energetic of these "quasars," as the accretion disks around galactic-core, supermassive black holes are sometimes known, can shine thousands of times brighter than the entire Milky Way. It's the point around a black hole past which not even light can escape.Īs matter falls into the supermassive black hole's gaping maw, it speeds up and heats up, eventually forming an orbital accretion disk of debris so hot and bright that it can be seen across billions of light years. But like black holes of any size, they grew at least in part by swallowing all matter and energy - including light, stars and even smaller black holes - that passes a gravitational boundary known as the event horizon. Larson also pointed out that how supermassive black holes with millions or billions of solar masses could grow so large, so fast, so soon after the universe's birth is still not fully understood. We still don't know how rare were," Larson said. "One data point is amazing but it's just one data point. ![]() Rebecca Larson, the post-doctoral associate at the Rochester Institute of Technology who led the research into CEERS 1019's discovery, said in a phone interview Thursday that there is still much more to learn from observing the similarities - and differences - between CEERS 1019 and supermassive black holes in our own galactic neighborhood. This makes it the lightest as well as the oldest supermassive black hole yet discovered from the universe's first billion years, bearing more of a resemblance to the Milky Way's own supermassive black hole Sagittarius A*, which is about 4.5 million times more massive than the sun, than it does to its near-contemporaries. Yet the one found in CEERS 1019 has only about 9 million solar masses. Supermassive black holes lie at the center of many galaxies, including our own, and those detected from the early universe can be billions of times more massive than the sun. They conducted their observations with the James Webb Telescope between June and December 2022, with their initial results published in the science journal Astrophysical Journal Letters.īesides its age, the supermassive black hole at the center of CEERS 1019 is notable for its small size. ![]() The scientists who discovered it were part of the Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science Survey, a research team led by astronomy professor Steven Finkelstein with the University of Texas at Austin. Lying at the center of a galaxy deemed CEERS 1019, it dates back some 13 billion years, only 570 million years after the Big Bang. (CN) - NASA announced Thursday that scientists utilizing the James Webb Space Telescope had discovered the most distant - and ancient - supermassive black hole found to date.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |