Scientists Discover Oldest Black Hole Ever That's 'Eating' Its Host Galaxy

Scientists have discovered the oldest black hole, dating from the dawn of the universe. The discovery was made possible by James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the most powerful space telescope ever built and the successor to Hubble. The international research team was led by experts from university of Cambridge and the research has been published in Nature. According to a university release, the black hole dates from 400 million years after the big bang, more than 13 billion years ago, and is eating its own galaxy.

Scientists said it is surprising to know that such supermassive black hole, which is a few million times the mass of our Sun, existed in the early universe.

So far, studies have shown that black holes, like the one found in our Milky Way galaxy, took billions of years to grow to their current size. But the size of this newly-discovered black hole suggests that they might form in other ways, said researchers.

"It's very early in the universe to see a black hole this massive, so we've got to consider other ways they might form," said Professor Roberto Maiolino said Maiolino, from Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory and Kavli Institute for Cosmology. "Very early galaxies were extremely gas-rich, so they would have been like a buffet for black holes," the lead author of the study added.

According to standard models, supermassive black holes form from the remnants of dead stars, which collapse and may form a black hole about a hundred times the mass of the Sun.

But this black hole is from a time then the universe was not yet a billion years old, according to the light captured by JWST.

And it is still young, devouring material from its host galaxy to fuel its growth, said the study. Its galaxy, GN-z11, is also young and glows from the energetic black hole at its centre. GN-z11 is about one hundred times smaller than the Milky Way, but the black hole is likely harming its development.

When a black hole consumes energy (in the form of planetary gas), it pushes the gas away like an ultra-fast wind. But the process could stop the process of star formation, slowly killing the galaxy, but it will also kill the black hole itself, as it would also cut off the black hole's source of 'food'.

Professor Maiolino and his team are hoping to use future observations from JWST to try to find smaller 'seeds' of black holes, which may help them understand the different ways that black holes might form: Whether they start out large or they grow fast.