Scientist discover most distant black hole: What makes it special and what will its study give?

NASA astrophysicists have found the farthest black hole from Earth ever discovered in the history of X-ray observations. The object was discovered thanks to observations by the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the James Webb Infrared Telescope. Astronomers hope it will help explain how the universe's first supermassive black holes formed.

As a team of scientists from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, led by Akos Bogdan, discovered, the supermassive black hole is located in a galaxy called UHZ1. Early observations indicated that the galaxy was located in the Abel 2744 cluster, 3.5 billion light-years from Earth, but further studies indicated that the galaxy was much further away, 13.2 billion light-years from Earth.

The black hole and its parent galaxy are about 470 million years old. The team of astrophysicists also found evidence that the UHZ1 black hole was massive even when it was still in its infancy. Its mass now varies between 10 and 100 million Suns, which is about the same as the mass of all the stars in its galaxy combined. It is precisely in these dimensions that it differs greatly from other black holes, the mass of which usually does not exceed one-tenth of the parent galaxy.

“There are physical limits to how fast black holes can grow after they form. However, black holes that are born with greater mass have an advantage. It's like planting a tree sapling instead of a small seed," said study co-author Andy Golding of Princeton University.

Two weeks of observations of this galaxy by the Chandra observatory have shown that it contains superheated gas that emits intense X-rays. As noted by NASA, this is a distinctive sign that the black hole is actively growing.

The astrophysicists' observations are consistent with theoretical predictions by Yale University physicist Priyamvada Natarajan in 2017 that supermassive black holes form from the collapse of a massive gas cloud.

"We believe this is the best evidence to date that some black holes are formed from massive gas clouds," Natarajan said. “This is the first time we have observed a supermassive black hole at such an early stage of its development that weighs roughly the same as the stars in its galaxy."

Astrophysicists hope the black hole will help clarify how supermassive black holes can reach such masses just a few hundred million years after their formation.