The James Webb Space Telescope continues to prove its worth, as NASA shared that it has spotted an active supermassive black hole that is further into space than humans have ever recorded. However, there is something odd about the black hole.
The black hole is in the center of a galaxy that astronomers say is likely more than 13 billion years old, CEERS 1019, NASA shared in a news release.
But while the galaxy is extremely old, the black hole is on the small side, clocking in at about “9 million solar masses.” A solar mass is a unit used to describe the mass of the sun in our solar system, which is about 333,000 times larger than Earth.
Its mass has left scientists perplexed, as they say, that 9 million solar masses is “far less than other black holes that also existed in the early universe and were detected by other telescopes.”
“Those behemoths typically contain more than 1 billion times the mass of the Sun – and they are easier to detect because they are much brighter,” NASA shared.
Rebecca Larson, who led the discovery, shared in the news release what it means to spot the black hole so far away.
“Looking at this distant object with this telescope is a lot like looking at data from black holes that exist in galaxies near our own,” Larson said.
Researchers were not only able to find the black hole in CEERS 1019, but they also noted that they found two others nearby that appear to have formed about 1 billion years after the big bang and were also lighter than what is typically observed.
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