Astronomers have made a groundbreaking discovery with the Webb Space Telescope, which detected the earliest known merger of black holes. The two massive black holes and their galaxies were found to have merged just 740 million years after the Big Bang that created the universe. This discovery represents the most distant detection ever made of merging black holes.
The two black holes identified in the merger are of vastly different sizes: one is 50 million times more massive than our sun, while the other is believed to be of a similar size but is hidden in dense gas, making it harder to measure. Prior to this discovery, astronomers were uncertain about how supermassive black holes grew to such enormous sizes.
Lead author Hannah Ubler of the University of Cambridge stated that “Massive black holes have been shaping the evolution of galaxies from the very beginning.” The new findings suggest that mergers play a significant role in the rapid growth of black holes, even during the early stages of the universe’s formation.
The Webb Space Telescope, launched in 2021 as the successor to NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, is a joint U.S.-European project that observes the universe from a location 1 million miles from Earth. The telescope provides valuable insights into the mysteries of space and continues to make groundbreaking discoveries like this one.
