Record breaking black hole discovered by UT Austin astronomers
The black hole is 300 million times more massive than our sun. In fact, it has more mass than half of the stars in its own galaxy combined.
Discovered using the James Webb Space Telescope, the black hole formed 500 million years after the Big Bang. This makes it 13.3 billion years old.
The team, led by UT Austin's Cosmic Frontier Center, published its work on Aug. 6 in Astrophysical Journal Letters.
To discover black holes, astronomers look for a peculiar light signature that signals fast moving gas. Gas that moves towards us is compressed into blue wavelengths, while gas moving away from us appears red through spectroscopy.
In a press release from UT Austin, the paper's lead author, Anthony Taylor, said, 'There aren't many other things that create this signature (besides a black hole).'
The galaxy where the black hole was discovered is called a 'Little Red Dot' galaxy. These galaxies formed in the first 1.5 billion years of the universe. The first discovery of these galaxies was made by the James Webb Space Telescope, which launched in 2021.
The discovery of this black hole gives us a better understanding of the early universe. In that same press release, Steven Finkelstein, a co-author of the paper, said, 'This adds to growing evidence that early black holes grew much faster than we thought possible.'
The team hopes the next steps for its research are to use James Webb to get more data on the CAPERS-LRD-z9 galaxy.
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