NASA’s JWST Unravels Mysteries of a Supermassive Black Hole Which Can Give Clues About the Early Universe

The rapid assembly of the first supermassive black holes has been an enduring mystery in astronomy. Just recently, the rest-frame infrared spectroscopy of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has unveiled the secrets of a mature quasar at cosmic dawn.

Formation of Supermassive Black Holes

It was believed that about 13.8 billion years ago, the universe began as an extremely hot and dense state called a singularity. After hundreds of thousands of years of cosmic expansion and cooling, matter was pulled together by gravity to form galaxies and galaxy clusters.

In the center of many galaxies lies supermassive black holes, which have masses of up to billions of times that of our Sun. In the Milky Way galaxy alone, a black hole named Sagittarius A* was found to have about 4 million times the mass of the Sun.

A black hole grows larger and larger as it sucks up matter. Because of this, the collision of galaxies leads to the creation of even larger supermassive black holes as the central black holes merge.

However, the growth of supermassive black holes is limited by the radiation they release as they consume matter. If the black hole accumulates too rapidly, the material can be pushed away by the radiation pressure, limiting further growth.

These voracious supermassive black holes can fuel quasars, the quasi-stellar objects regarded as some of the brightest and most energetic objects in the universe. This is made possible by consuming enough gas and dust to become active galactic nuclei.

In 2011, an inexplicably massive black hole was discovered in the center of the J1120+0641 galaxy. When the universe was only 770 million years old, this black hole was already one billion times as massive as our own Sun.

For many years, astronomers have been puzzled as to how this huge black hole reached such a gargantuan mass in the early years of our cosmos. Although J1120+0641 has a quasar at its center, it is still unclear how such a powerful and supermassive black hole existed in the first billion years of the existence of the cosmos.

Unveiling the Secrets of J1120+0641

Several theories were proposed to explain how ancient black holes became extremely large. This includes the idea that early black holes were more efficient consumers than their modern counterparts. Some scientists also believe that the masses of these black holes may have been overestimated due to the presence of dust.

In the paper "A mature quasar at cosmic dawn revealed by JWST rest-frame infrared spectroscopy," a team of researchers discounts one of the major theories put forward to explain the mystery of these large ancient black holes. Led by Sarah E. I. Bosman, the team used data from JWST to gain more insights about the existence of supermassive black holes.

The JWST observations suggest that the large rotating cloud of dust surrounding these black holes is almost the same as those seen in their modern counterpart. This means that the feeding mechanisms of the black hole then and now are almost the same, so their size during the birth of the cosmos was not affected by how much they consume.

For now, this cosmic mystery remains unresolved. The new JWST observation even adds to the mystery by revealing that no matter in which wavelengths the quasars were observed, they are almost identical at all epochs of the universe.