An international team of astronomers has discovered the oldest black hole, whose existence dates back to an era when the universe was barely 400 million years old, according to a study whose results were published on Wednesday.
Astrophysicist at the Kavli Institute of Cosmology at the British University of Cambridge, Jan Schulz, said that this discovery postpones the date of the oldest massive black hole by “about 200 million years.”
The co-author of the study published in the journal “Nature” pointed out that this study “will feed a new generation of theoretical models” to explain the existence of a similar phenomenon in the young universe, more than 13 billion years ago.
The mass of this black hole is estimated at 1.6 million times the mass of our sun. It is invisible, like all black holes, and absorbs the matter surrounding it by emitting an enormous amount of light in its surroundings.
It is this light that made it possible to discover the galaxy with the black hole at its heart, which was named “GN-z11” when its discovery was announced in 2016 using the Hubble Space Telescope.
GN-z11 was then the oldest galaxy observed by Hubble, and therefore the most distant… until the use of the James Webb Space Telescope in 2022, which made it possible to discover the black hole in GN-z11.
This discovery is in addition to other discoveries made available by the James Webb Telescope, which reveal a young universe that includes objects brighter than expected.
The black hole discovered by the international team led by the University of Cambridge dates back to 430 million years after the Big Bang. It is the period of cosmic dawn, when the first stars and galaxies were born at the end of the so-called “dark” ages.
