The state-of-the-art Webb Space Telescope has discovered the most distant black hole merger yet, which occurred when the universe was only 740 million years old. This is the first time astronomers have discovered a merger so early in the history of the universe, breaking records.
Black holes are massive objects found throughout the universe. Their gravitational fields are so powerful that not even light can escape their event horizon. Black hole mergers are exactly what they sound like: a slow, terrifying dance between two objects, usually at the centers of their respective galaxies, that eventually merge into a single object.
The most recent merged observations were made by an astronomical team in May 2023 using the Webb Telescope’s NIRSpec-IFU instrument. The cosmic void encounter occurred when the universe was about three-quarters of a billion years old (for reference, the universe is now 13 billion years older than that!), in a galaxy system called ZS7.
The merger was discovered because the spectral signatures of accreting black holes (those that are actively absorbing matter) are invisible to ground-based telescopes. Thankfully, Webb is located in L2, a region of space one million miles from Earth, from where it can peer even deeper into the universe.
Hannah Ãœbler, an astronomer at the University of Cambridge and lead author of the study, said in an article by the European Space Agency (ESA): “Our results show that mergers are an important path for the rapid growth of black holes. Pathways, even at the dawn of the universe. release. “Together with Webb’s other findings of active massive black holes in the distant universe, our results also show that massive black holes are shaping the evolution of galaxies from the beginning.”
Webber’s eyesight was so sharp that the team was able to spatially separate the two black holes, revealing some of their physical characteristics. One of the holes is about 50 million times more massive than the Sun, while the other is obscured by a dense cloud of gas.The team’s full paper on the discovery is publish Published today in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
When black holes merge, they Send out gravitational shock waves Compressing and stretching spacetime over billions of light years.The waves were detected by observatories managed by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA collaboration, part of which Gravitational waves detected for the first time in 2015.
However, understanding the gravitational universe has a brighter future. Officially adopted by the European Space Agency In January, the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), a space-based gravitational wave observatory, paved the way for the spacecraft’s eventual launch and operation.
“Webb’s results tell us that LISA should detect lighter systems much more frequently than previously assumed,” Nora Luetzgendorf, ESA’s LISA chief project scientist, said in the same press release expressed in. “This will likely lead us to adjust our models for LISA rates in this quality range. This is just the tip of the iceberg.
Taken together, the next generation of space telescopes has revealed not only the earliest black holes, but also their frequency in the universe. Unraveling the mysteries of black holes—how they grow, interact with their surroundings, and shape them—will help astrophysicists understand some of the most fundamental mysteries of the universe.
more: 9 things you didn’t know about black holes
