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Researchers have identified the oldest black hole ever observed, dating from the beginning of the universe, and determined that it is ‘eating’ its host galaxy to death. The study, published in the journal Nature, used the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to locate the black hole, which formed 400 million years after the Big Bang, more than 13 billion years ago.

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Researchers using the James Webb Space Telescope have uncovered the oldest black hole ever detected—and declared a new era in astronomy.

It was found at the center of GN-z11, a galaxy first discovered in 2017, about 13.4 billion light-years away from our Milky Way galaxy—but about 100 times smaller. That means it exists just 400 million years after the Big Bang, which is thought to have created the universe. However, the black hole looks to be about a billion years old, suggesting problems with theories about how quickly black holes form.

The discovery, announced in a paper published today in the journal Nature, is the result of the sensitivity of JWST, which can see deep into the infrared, detecting old light that has been traveling across deep since the dawn of time.

Researchers have discovered the oldest black hole ever observed, dating from the dawn of the universe, and found that it is ‘eating’ its host galaxy to death.

The international team, led by the University of Cambridge, used the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to detect the black hole, which dates from 400 million years after the Big Bang, more than 13 billion years ago. The results, which lead author Professor Roberto Maiolino says are “a giant leap forward,” are reported in the journal Nature.

That this surprisingly massive black hole —a few million times the mass of our sun—even exists so early in the universe challenges our assumptions about how black holes form and grow. Astronomers believe that the supermassive black holes found at the center of galaxies like the Milky Way grew to their current size over billions of years. But the size of this newly-discovered black hole suggests that they might form in other ways: they might be ‘born big’ or they can eat matter at a rate that’s five times higher than had been thought possible.

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