James Webb Telescope Discovers Feeding Supermassive Black Hole

Using the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have discovered a rapidly feeding supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy CANUCS-LRD-z8.6, which existed just 570 million years after the Big Bang.

This galaxy is part of a class known as 'Little Red Dots,' which has puzzled scientists due to their unexpected characteristics. The black hole in CANUCS-LRD-z8.6 has an estimated mass of around 100 million solar masses, which is remarkably large for such a compact galaxy in its early evolutionary stage.

The team, led by Roberta Tripodi from the University of Ljubljana, reported that this discovery challenges current theories of black hole and galaxy formation. They utilized the Near-Infrared Spectrograph, or NIRSpec, to analyze light from the galaxy, revealing the presence of highly ionized gas swirling around the black hole, a sign of its rapid accretion.

The mass of the black hole is significantly disproportionate compared to the galaxy's stellar population, suggesting that supermassive black holes may grow at a faster pace than their host galaxies. Marusa Bradac, another team member, emphasized the importance of this finding for understanding the formation of the universe's first black holes.

The CANUCS team plans to continue their investigations with the James Webb Space Telescope and the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array, or ALMA, to further explore the cold gas within CANUCS-LRD-z8.6 and refine their understanding of its supermassive black hole.

The ongoing research aims to uncover more galaxies like CANUCS-LRD-z8.6, potentially shedding light on the origins of black holes and how they evolved during the universe's infancy. This discovery is truly remarkable, as it opens new avenues of research into the complexities of black hole growth and galaxy formation in the early universe.