In a groundbreaking discovery, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has captured light from stars surrounding supermassive black holes in the early universe, shedding light on the rapid growth of these cosmic behemoths.
A team from MIT conducted the observations with the aim of unraveling the mystery of how black holes, equivalent to millions of suns in mass, grew at such an astonishing rate less than a billion years after the Big Bang. The study revealed that these supermassive black holes were feeding on surrounding material, producing immense tidal forces in an accretion disk that makes the disk glow and powers objects known as quasars.
Contrary to previous beliefs that supermassive black holes grow by merging with smaller black holes over billions of years, MIT’s findings suggest that these black holes in the early universe grew from heavy seeds. Using the JWST, the team observed faint light coming from stars in the host galaxies of ancient quasars, indicating that black holes gained their mass before their host galaxies did.
This study delves into the age-old question of whether black holes or galaxies grew first in the early universe, providing new insights into the rapid growth of supermassive black holes. The high sensitivity and resolution of the JWST allowed the team to distinguish light from stars around quasars, leading to a better understanding of how black holes and galaxies evolve.
Published in the Astrophysical Journal, the team’s results provide tentative evidence that the initial black hole seeds could have been more massive in the early universe. This groundbreaking research could revolutionize our understanding of the universe’s early days and the role supermassive black holes played in shaping it.
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