This Massive Black Hole May Have Formed In Early Big Bang Era

Astronomers have identified an ancient and "nearly naked" black hole using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). If confirmed as a primordial black hole, it could change what we know about the formation of the universe.

"This black hole is nearly naked," Professor Roberto Maiolino, a cosmologist at the University of Cambridge and part of the observing team, said, as per The Guardian. "This is really challenging for the theories. It seems that this black hole has formed without being preceded by a galaxy around it."

Primordial black holes are thought to have formed after the Big Bang, when hot, dense areas of space collapsed under their own gravity. These early black holes may have helped gas and dust come together to form the first galaxies.

Until now, scientists thought stars and galaxies formed first, and black holes appeared later when the earliest stars ran out of fuel and collapsed.

The new observations focus on a small, red object called QSO1. It is more than 13 billion years old, from a time when the universe was just 700 million years old. Astronomers say QSO1 is one of several "little red dots" found by JWST.

These dots are so red, small and bright that they are likely ancient supermassive black holes. Usually, black holes start small and grow by consuming stars. Scientists have been puzzled about how such huge black holes could exist so early in the universe, according to the Arxiv website.

Even though QSO1 is very far away, astronomers measured the speed of the gas and dust around it. They found the black hole has a mass of 50 million times that of the Sun, while the surrounding material is less than half as massive.

The gas around the black hole is almost entirely hydrogen and helium, the elements left over from the Big Bang, according to a separate research. There are very few heavier elements, which form in stars, showing that little star formation has happened nearby.

"These results are a paradigm change," Professor Maiolino said. "Here we're witnessing a massive black hole formed without much of a galaxy, as far as we can say from the data."

One possible explanation is that a huge cloud of gas collapsed directly into a black hole without forming stars. But this "direct collapse" needs very specific conditions, which are not seen here. This makes the primordial black hole idea slightly more likely.