Discovery

International research team charts most distant black hole ever observed

The discovery, recorded by the University of Texas at Austin's Cosmic Frontier Center, challenges predictions about how black holes form and grow.

CAPERS-LRD-z9, home to the earliest confirmed black hole, is shown in an artist representation. The supermassive black hole at its center is believed to be surrounded by a thick cloud of gas, giving the galaxy a distinctive red color. [Erik Zumalt/University of Texas at Austin]
CAPERS-LRD-z9, home to the earliest confirmed black hole, is shown in an artist representation. The supermassive black hole at its center is believed to be surrounded by a thick cloud of gas, giving the galaxy a distinctive red color. [Erik Zumalt/University of Texas at Austin]

By Bethany Lee |

Scientists have discovered the oldest confirmed black hole, a supermassive space object that is 13.3 billion years old and has about 300 million times more mass than our sun.

The international team of astronomers who made the discovery were led by the Cosmic Frontier Center at the University of Texas at Austin and published their findings in the Astrophysical Journal Letters on August 6.

By using spectroscopy, a method of studying gases based on light waves, the team determined the black hole likely developed only 500 million years after the big bang, a drop in the bucket in our universe’s 13.8 billion year lifespan.

"When looking for black holes, this is about as far back as you can practically go," said Cosmic Frontier Center postdoctoral researcher and team lead Anthony Taylor.

Images captured by the James Webb Telescope's primary near-infrared imager, NIRCam, show a recent class of space objects known as "little red dots." [Space Telescope Science Institute]
Images captured by the James Webb Telescope's primary near-infrared imager, NIRCam, show a recent class of space objects known as "little red dots." [Space Telescope Science Institute]

"We’re really pushing the boundaries of what current technology can detect."

Black holes tend to start small and then grow by consuming the matter around them. This one is different: it somehow accumulated a colossal amount of mass in a relatively short time.

The discovery adds to growing evidence that black holes in the universe’s infancy either started with far more mass than current models predict or developed far more rapidly than scientists previously expected.

New findings challenge existing models about how black holes form and grow.

Little red dots

The newly discovered black hole sits at the center of CAPERS-LRD-z9, a reddish, cloudlike galaxy that is one of a recent class of space objects known as little red dots (LRDs).

Astronomers began to notice these LRDs soon after NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope became operational, although they weren’t initially sure how to describe what looked like tiny red smudges in the images.

"There was a lot of intense debate initially about what these little red dots are," Taylor told NPR. "Were they galaxies with a bunch of old stars in them? Were they active black hole driven?"

After compiling publicly available data from Webb, scientists determined LRDs were likely to be galaxies with growing black holes at their centers, almost all of which occur at higher redshifts -- less than 1.5 billion years after the big bang.

"The most exciting thing for me is the redshift distributions," said Cosmic Frontier Center director Steven Finkelstein, who has co-authored an LRD study.

"These really red, high-redshift sources basically stop existing at a certain point after the big bang," Finkelstein said.

"If they are growing black holes, and we think at least 70% of them are, this hints at an era of obscured black hole growth in the early universe."

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