Latest news with #COSMOSWeb
Yahoo
19-07-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Bizarre "Infinity Galaxy" Could Hold the Secrets of Supermassive Black Holes
Astronomers using data collected by the James Webb Space Telescope have discovered a spectacular cosmic object they're calling the "Infinity Galaxy." The site of an epic head-on collision between two galaxies, it could harbor the secrets to how the heaviest black holes in the universe, the supermassive black holes found at the hearts of galaxies, are born and reach their unbelievable masses — masses extreme enough to organize trillions of stars around them. "Everything is unusual about this galaxy. Not only does it look very strange, but it also has this supermassive black hole that's pulling a lot of material in," Pieter van Dokkum, lead author of a new study published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, said in a statement about the work. "As an unexpected bonus, it turns out that both galaxy nuclei also have an active supermassive black hole," van Dokkum added. "So, this system has three confirmed active black holes: two very massive ones in both of the galaxy nuclei, and the one in between them that might have formed there." The singularity-studded object was found by searching through public data collected in the COSMOS-Web survey, which is designed to document the evolution of galaxies, with data gathered on 800,000 realms and counting. In an image taken with the Webb, two bright spots represent the nuclei of each of the two colliding galaxies, both surrounded by their own ring of stars. This lends it the shape of an infinity symbol, hence its memorable name. What's most striking, though, is what appears between them, revealed in follow-up observations: an enormous supermassive black hole swimming in a sea of ionized gas. It's estimated to contain a mass equivalent to a million times that of our own Sun — and it's still actively growing. "It likely didn't just arrive there, but instead it formed there. And pretty recently," van Dokkum said. "We think we're witnessing the birth of a supermassive black hole — something that has never been seen before." This could be some of the most compelling evidence yet of black holes forming by directly collapsing into a singularity from a huge, heavy cloud of gas. The origins of supermassive black holes are one of the great mysteries of cosmology. They undeniably exist, forming the heart of the largest galaxies, including our own Milky Way — but how they form and gain such unbelievable heft is still hotly debated; the heaviest black holes may weigh hundreds of billions of solar masses. The most well-known way that black holes are born is through the collapse of a very massive star that explodes in a supernova. This might spawn a black hole with several to a hundred times the mass of the Sun, maybe even a thousand. Then, give one of these stellar-mass black holes hundreds of millions to billions of years to devour matter that falls into it, or merge with other black holes, and it might reach a supermassive stature. Astronomers, however, have observed black holes boasting millions of solar masses while existing just 400 million years after the Big Bang, which simply isn't enough time for one to reach its size by gradually accreting matter. That points to another possibility called the "heavy seed theory," explains van Dokkum, "where a much larger black hole, maybe up to one million times the mass of our Sun, forms directly from the collapse of a large gas cloud." This would've been facilitated by the hot conditions of the early universe, allowing a gas cloud to collapse into one large object instead of forming numerous smaller stars. "It's not clear that this direct-collapse process could work in practice," van Dokkum said. But there's compelling reason to believe that the Infinity Galaxy is home to a black hole born through this exact process. The best clue is the central supermassive black hole's velocity, which matches up with the surrounding gas, strongly suggesting it formed right where we're seeing it. If it formed elsewhere in the cosmos and barged into the mix, the velocity would be significantly higher. What astronomers think happened, then, is that when the constituent two galaxies collided, the gas contained in them compressed to form a "dense knot," van Dokkum said, "which then collapsed into a black hole." "We can't say definitively that we have found a direct collapse black hole," van Dokkum concluded. "But we can say that these new data strengthen the case that we're seeing a newborn black hole, while eliminating some of the competing explanations." More on black holes: Scientists Detect Sign of Something Impossible Out in Deep Space Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
17-07-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
JWST finds unusual black hole in the center of the Infinity Galaxy: 'How can we make sense of this?'
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers have discovered an oddball galaxy, dubbed the Infinity Galaxy, that could be host to a "direct collapse black hole." That is, a black hole originally created directly from a vast cloud of collapsing gas and dust rather than a dying star. The Infinity Galaxy gets its name from the fact that its shape resembles an infinity symbol (a sideways 8) with two red lobes or "nuclei." This shape is thought to have arisen because the Infinity Galaxy was formed as two disk galaxies engaged in a head-on collision. What makes this highly unusual is the fact that this black hole sits between the two colliding galaxies in a vast cloud of gas, rather than in either respective nucleus. From its perch between these galaxies, the black hole now feeds greedily on that gas, but researchers think that same cloud also once birthed it. That would make this the first observational evidence of the direct collapse pathway of black hole birth. The researchers behind these findings uncovered the Infinity Galaxy while examining images from the JWST's 255-hour treasury COSMOS-Web survey. In addition to the suspected direct collapse black hole that sits between the colliding galaxies, the team found that each nucleus of those galaxies also contains a supermassive black hole! "Everything is unusual about this galaxy. Not only does it look very strange, but it also has this supermassive black hole that's pulling a lot of material in," team leader and Yale University researcher Pieter van Dokkum said in a statement. "The biggest surprise of all was that the black hole was not located inside either of the two nuclei but in the middle. "We asked ourselves: How can we make sense of this?" van Dokkum explained that finding a black hole not in the nucleus of a massive galaxy isn't, in itself, unusual. What is strange is the question of how that black hole got there. "It likely didn't just arrive there, but instead it formed there," van Dokkum said. "And pretty recently. In other words, we think we're witnessing the birth of a supermassive black hole – something that has never been seen before." This discovery could solve an intriguing mystery regarding the observation of supermassive black holes with masses millions or billions of times that of the sun, less than 1 billion years after the Big Bang. Black holes could skip stellar deaths and supernovas Since it began operating three years ago, the JWST has delivered something of a conundrum to cosmologists; observations that show supermassive black holes seem common as early as 500 million years after the Big Bang. That's a problem because it was previously proposed that supermassive black holes form through successive mergers of smaller black holes. However, beginning this process with so-called stellar-mass black holes would require waiting for the first generation of stars to form, live their lives, then collapse in supernova explosions. The resulting black holes would have to undergo a series of mergers and periods of intense feeding upon interstellar gas and dust. This process would take at least a billion years to "grow" a black hole to supermassive status. Thus, seeing a multitude of supermassive black holes before the universe was 1 billion years old is problematic. That is, unless these bodies got a head start by skipping the stellar life and birth stage of this process. "How supermassive black holes formed is a long-standing question. There are two main theories, called 'light seeds' and 'heavy seeds.' In the light seed theory, you start with small black holes formed when a star's core collapses and the star explodes as a supernova," van Dokkum explained. "That might result in a black hole weighing up to about 1,000 suns. You form a lot of them in a small space, and they merge over time to become a much more massive black hole." As mentioned above, the problem with that is the time this process would take and the JWST's discovery of incredibly massive black holes at early stages of our 13.8 billion-year-old universe. Black holes could have heavy seeds Alternatively, the heavy seed theory sees supermassive black hole growth kickstarted with a much larger black hole, maybe up to one million times the mass of the sun. This forms directly from the collapse of a large gas cloud. "You immediately form a giant black hole, so it's much quicker. However, the problem with forming a black hole out of a gas cloud is that gas clouds like to form stars as they collapse rather than a black hole, so you have to find some way of preventing that. It's not clear that this direct-collapse process could work in practice," van Dokkum said. "By looking at the data from the Infinity Galaxy, we think we've pieced together a story of how this could have happened here." The researchers suggest that as the two disk galaxies collided, a ring structure of stars, visible in the JWST image, was formed. During this collision, gas within these two galaxies would have been shocked and compressed. They think this compression may have been so extreme that it formed a "dense knot" in the gas, which then collapsed into a black hole. As van Dokkum explained, there is a wealth of circumstantial evidence for this formation channel for the black hole in the Infinity Galaxy. "We observe a large swath of ionized gas, specifically hydrogen that has been stripped of its electrons, that's right in the middle between the two nuclei, surrounding the supermassive black hole," he continued. "We also know that the black hole is actively growing – we see evidence of that in X-rays from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and radio from the Very Large Array. Nevertheless, the question is, did it form there?" There are two possible explanations that don't involve a direct collapse black hole forming at the intersection of these merged galaxies. "First, it could be a runaway black hole that got ejected from a galaxy and just happens to be passing through," van Dokkum said. "Second, it could be a black hole at the center of a third galaxy in the same location on the sky. If it were in a third galaxy, we would expect to see the surrounding galaxy unless it were a faint dwarf galaxy. However, dwarf galaxies don't tend to host giant black holes. "If the black hole were a runaway, or if it were in an unrelated galaxy, we would expect it to have a very different velocity from the gas in the Infinity Galaxy." To test this, the team intends to measure the velocity of the gas and the velocity of the black hole and compare them. Should those velocities be close, within around 30 miles per second (50 kilometers per second), then van Dokkum asserts that it will be hard to argue that the black hole is not formed from that gas. Related Stories: —The James Webb Space Telescope has discovered its 1st exoplanet and snapped its picture (image) —Astronomers discover origins of mysterious double hot Jupiter exoplanets: 'It is a dance of sorts' —NASA exoplanet-hunting spacecraft and citizen scientists discover a cool new alien world "Our preliminary results are exciting. First, the presence of an extended distribution of ionized gas between the two nuclei is confirmed. Second, the black hole is beautifully in the middle of the velocity distribution of this surrounding gas, as expected if it formed there. This is the key result that we were after!" van Dokkum continued. "Third, as an unexpected bonus, it turns out that both galaxy nuclei also have an active supermassive black hole." Though the team can't say definitively that they discovered a direct collapse black hole, they can state with confidence that this JWST data strengthens the case for this being a newborn black hole, while eliminating some of the counter-explanations to the direct collapse pathway. "This system has three confirmed active black holes: two very massive ones in both of the galaxy nuclei, and the one in between them that might have formed there," van Dokkum said. "We will continue to pore through the data and investigate these possibilities." Solve the daily Crossword
Daily Mail
12-06-2025
- Science
- Daily Mail
Scroll through the UNIVERSE: Incredible interactive map lets you explore nearly 800,000 galaxies - peering back as far as 13.5 billion years
Studying the depths of the universe usually involves billions of pounds of supercomputers, satellites, and telescopes. But a team of scientists has now made it possible for you to explore the cosmos from the comfort of your own home. Their incredible interactive map, dubbed COSMOS-Web, lets you scroll through almost 800,000 galaxies and peer back as far as 13.5 billion years. That means looking back through 98 per cent of cosmic time almost to the birth of the universe 13.8 billion years ago. Covering an area of sky about the same size as three full moons, this image combines more than 10,000 photographs from the James Webb Space Telescope. Professor Caitlin Casey, an astronomer at UC Santa Barbara who co-led the COSMOS collaboration, said: 'Our goal was to construct this deep field of space on a physical scale that far exceeded anything that had been done before. 'If you had a printout of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field on a standard piece of paper, our image would be slightly larger than a 13-foot by 13-foot-wide mural, at the same depth. 'So it's really strikingly large.' While the data for this map has existed for a while, it was previously in a raw form that needed expert analysis and a supercomputer to interpret. But over the last two years, an international team of scientists has worked to turn the data behind the largest map of the universe into something that anyone can use. In the stunning interactive map, at this link, you can zoom out to see hundreds of thousands of galaxies stretch across the sky or zoom in to reveal amazing details. Using the tools included in the map you can even dive deeper into the data by switching between different imaging tools. To learn even more, turn on catalogues using the tabs on the left-hand side and click on any galaxy to bring up a vast trove of data. The researchers have made this available to the public in the hopes that more people will be able to help dig into the data and unpick some of the universe's most puzzling questions. Professor Casey says: 'The best science is really done when everyone thinks about the same data set differently. 'It's not just for one group of people to figure out the mysteries.' Six galaxies hidden in the COSMOS-Web map as they were 3 billion, 4 billion, 8 billion, 9 billion and 10 billion years ago (from top left to bottom right). This period spans almost the entirety of cosmic history Nine galaxies in the map which span all of cosmic time, from upper left to lower right: the present day universe, 3, 4, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13 billion years ago Already, this enormous set of data is helping scientists understand how galaxies formed at the beginning of time and challenging some basic assumptions in astronomy. Based on data from the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers expected galaxies to be extremely rare in the first 500 million years. This is because it takes a long time for stars to form under gravity and get pulled together into larger structures. But when the researchers looked back at the most distant reaches of the universe, they found there were about 10 times more galaxies than they expected to find. Professor Casey says: 'Since the telescope turned on we've been wondering 'Are these JWST datasets breaking the cosmological model?' 'Because the universe was producing too much light too early; it had only about 400 million years to form something like a billion solar masses of stars. We just do not know how to make that happen.' The map is so much more detailed than earlier efforts because of the size of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). While Hubble's main light-collecting was 7ft 10 inches (2.4m) across, the JWST's is a staggering 21ft (6.5m) wide. You can use the filters on the map to reveal more information about the universe By clicking on any galaxy you can pull up a huge amount of data collected by the James Webb Space Telescope That allows the telescope to collect the faintest traces of light coming from the furthest reaches of the galaxy. Dr Jeyhan Kartaltepe, associate professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology who co-leads COSMOS-Web, says: 'The sensitivity of JWST lets us see much fainter and more distant galaxies than ever before, so we're able to find galaxies in the very early universe and study their properties in detail.' Going forward the team behind COSMOS-Web still has a lot more work to do in order to unpack all the data hidden in the map. They plan to use the JWST spectrographic tools to identify the oldest galaxies in the image and learn more about the chemistry of these early stars. The Big Bang Theory is a cosmological model, a theory used to describe the beginning and the evolution of our universe. It says that the universe was in a very hot and dense state before it started to expand 13,7 billion years ago. This theory is based on fundamental observations. In 1920, Hubble observed that the distance between galaxies was increasing everywhere in the universe. This means that galaxies had to be closer to each other in the past. In 1964, Wilson and Penzias discovered the cosmic background radiation, which is a like a fossil of radiation emitted during the beginning of the universe, when it was hot and dense. The cosmic background radiation is observable everywhere in the universe. The composition of the universe - that is, the the number of atoms of different elements - is consistent with the Big Bang Theory. So far, this theory is the only one that can explain why we observe an abundance of primordial elements in the universe.
Economic Times
22-05-2025
- Science
- Economic Times
Astronomers observe largest ever sample of galaxies up to over 12 billion light years away: Study
The largest sample of galaxy groups ever detected has been presented by a team of international astronomers using data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) in an area of the sky called COSMOS Web. The study marks a major milestone in extragalactic astronomy, providing unprecedented insights into the formation and evolution of galaxies and the large-scale structure of the universe. Peering back in time to when the universe was younger than the Earth is now, the images span the period from around twelve billion years ago until one billion years new catalogue of images, soon to be published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics (A&A), includes nearly 1,700 galaxy research group's impressive image of a galaxy cluster over six billion light years away is currently showcased as the European Space Agency's (ESA) picture of the month. "We're able to actually observe some of the first galaxies formed in the universe," says Ghassem Gozaliasl of Aalto University, and head of the galaxy groups detection team who led the study."We detected 1,678 galaxy groups or proto-clusters -- the largest and deepest sample of galaxy groups ever detected -- with the James Webb Space Telescope. With this sample, we can study the evolution of galaxies in groups over the past 12 billion years of cosmic time," added Gozaliasl. The James Webb Space Telescope began operating in 2022. The largest telescope in space, with its higher resolution and greater sensitivity, has enabled astronomers to see farther and better than ever before. Because light travels at a finite speed, the further away an object is, the further back in time our image of it. By observing very faint, very distant galaxies -- the faintest galaxies in this dataset are one billion times dimmer than the human eye can see -- the team got a glimpse of what galaxies looked like in the early universe, Gozaliasl said. Gozaliasl explains that galaxy groups and clusters are rich environments filled with dark matter, hot gas, and massive central galaxies that often host supermassive black holes. "The complex interactions between these components play a crucial role in shaping the life cycles of galaxies and driving the evolution of the groups and clusters themselves. By uncovering a more complete history of these cosmic structures, we can better understand how these processes have influenced the formation and growth of both massive galaxies and the largest structures in the universe," added Gozaliasl.
Time of India
22-05-2025
- Science
- Time of India
Astronomers observe largest ever sample of galaxies up to over 12 billion light years away: Study
An international team of astronomers, utilizing the James Webb Space Telescope, has identified nearly 1,700 galaxy groups in the COSMOS Web area. This extensive catalogue provides unprecedented insights into galaxy formation and the universe's large-scale structure, spanning from twelve billion to one billion years ago. The findings allow scientists to study galaxy evolution within groups across vast cosmic time. Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads The largest sample of galaxy groups ever detected has been presented by a team of international astronomers using data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) in an area of the sky called COSMOS study marks a major milestone in extragalactic astronomy , providing unprecedented insights into the formation and evolution of galaxies and the large-scale structure of the back in time to when the universe was younger than the Earth is now, the images span the period from around twelve billion years ago until one billion years new catalogue of images, soon to be published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics (A&A), includes nearly 1,700 galaxy research group's impressive image of a galaxy cluster over six billion light years away is currently showcased as the European Space Agency's (ESA) picture of the month."We're able to actually observe some of the first galaxies formed in the universe," says Ghassem Gozaliasl of Aalto University, and head of the galaxy groups detection team who led the study."We detected 1,678 galaxy groups or proto-clusters -- the largest and deepest sample of galaxy groups ever detected -- with the James Webb Space Telescope. With this sample, we can study the evolution of galaxies in groups over the past 12 billion years of cosmic time," added James Webb Space Telescope began operating in 2022. The largest telescope in space, with its higher resolution and greater sensitivity, has enabled astronomers to see farther and better than ever light travels at a finite speed, the further away an object is, the further back in time our image of it. By observing very faint, very distant galaxies -- the faintest galaxies in this dataset are one billion times dimmer than the human eye can see -- the team got a glimpse of what galaxies looked like in the early universe, Gozaliasl explains that galaxy groups and clusters are rich environments filled with dark matter , hot gas, and massive central galaxies that often host supermassive black holes."The complex interactions between these components play a crucial role in shaping the life cycles of galaxies and driving the evolution of the groups and clusters themselves. By uncovering a more complete history of these cosmic structures, we can better understand how these processes have influenced the formation and growth of both massive galaxies and the largest structures in the universe," added Gozaliasl.
