Astronomers are on the verge of a historic first discovery! To do that, they discovered an unusually massive black hole potentially formed only minutes after the Big Bang. This black hole—housed within one of the most distant quasars known as QSO1—has a mass 50 million times that of the Sun. If it truly exists, it could radically alter our view of cosmic evolution.
The observation, by the James Webb Space Telescope, is truly remarkable. It didn’t just show us the black hole itself – it showed us the entire environment around the black hole. The stuff around the black hole is much less dense, but it has a lot more total mass. This mass is less than half of the central mass. This very notable and striking observation really stands out in high contrast against the status quo. Normally, black holes are found in the centers of galaxies where they are surrounded by a lot of material.
According to one of the experts behind the discovery, Prof Roberto Maiolino, this black hole is “almost naked.” He explained that this was a really exciting finding in particular because it upends the conventional view of how black holes are formed.
“This is in stark contrast with what we observe in our local universe, where the black holes at the centre of galaxies [like the Milky Way] are about a thousand times less massive than their host galaxy,” Maiolino stated. He noted how rare it is to see such a large black hole that has apparently formed without a lot of galactic material.
This black hole’s surroundings are full of glowing material that is chemically “pristine,” mostly made up of hydrogen and helium. These two conditions are leftovers from the Big Bang. Combined, they provide key pieces of information about the 10-trillionth of a second that came after the Big Bang. The finding of the primordial material gives powerful credence to ideas first theorized by physicist Stephen Hawking. These theories paint the picture that primordial black holes could have emerged when the universe was just a baby.
That makes QSO1 more than 13 billion years old. It was born at a time when the universe was only about 700 million years old. This makes it an extraordinary candidate for studying the universe’s early conditions and the formation of celestial bodies shortly after the Big Bang.
Finding a primordial black hole would be nothing short of monumental. If so, it would totally shatter our understanding of cosmic structure and evolution. If it does exist, the existence of such a massive black hole without a nearby companion galaxy would be shocking. What does this phenomenon mean for the fundamental laws of physics that govern our universe?
Maiolino remarked on the significance of this finding, stating, “Here we’re witnessing a massive black hole formed without much of a galaxy, as far as we can say from the data.” This observation opens up exciting new lines of research. It should lead us to reconsider our existing paradigms of galaxy formation and black hole evolution.