Most Distant Black Hole Yet Observed By NASA Telescopes

Space.com

Data from Chandra X-ray telescope and James Webb Space Telescopes have revealed a black hole from 470 million years after the Big Bang.   Credit: NASA/CXC/A. Hobart

Transcript

00:00Visit Chandra's Beautiful Universe

00:05UHC-1

00:07Astronomers have discovered the most distant black hole yet seen in X-rays

00:14using two NASA telescopes, the Chandra X-ray Observatory and James Webb Space Telescope.

00:22The black hole is at an early stage of growth that had never been witnessed before,

00:26where its mass is similar to that of its host galaxy.

00:30This result may explain how some of the first supermassive black holes in the universe formed.

00:37By combining data from Chandra and Webb,

00:40a team of researchers was able to find the telltale signature of a growing black hole

00:45just 470 million years after the Big Bang.

00:49The extremely distant black hole is located in the galaxy UHC-1

00:54in the direction of the galaxy cluster Abel 2744.

00:58The galaxy cluster is about 3.5 billion light-years from Earth.

01:04However, the web data reveal that UHC-1 is actually much farther away than Abel 2744.

01:11At some 13.2 billion light-years away, astronomers are seeing UHC-1 when the universe was only 3% of its current age.

01:21By using over two weeks of observations from Chandra,

01:25the researchers were able to detect X-ray emission from UHC-1.

01:31This is a telltale signature of a growing supermassive black hole in the center of the galaxy.

01:36The X-ray signal is extremely faint, and Chandra was only able to detect it,

01:42even with this long observation,

01:45because of the phenomenon known as gravitational lensing that enhanced the signal by some 400%.

01:50This discovery is important for understanding how some supermassive black holes can reach colossal masses

01:57soon after the Big Bang.

01:59Do they form directly from the collapse of massive clouds of gas,

02:03creating black holes weighing between about 10,000 and 100,000 suns?

02:07Or do they come from explosions of the first stars that create black holes weighing only between about 10 and 100,000 suns?

02:15The researchers suggest this is the best evidence yet obtained

02:19that some black holes formed from massive clouds of gas.

02:23They plan to use this and other results pouring in from Webb

02:26and those combining data from other telescopes, including Chandra,

02:30to help fill out a larger picture of black holes in the early universe.

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