Oldest black hole known to date discovered

According to these data, the black hole devoured its host galaxy GN-z11 just 430 million years after the birth of the universe – at a time called the cosmic dawn. This makes it 200 million years older than any other massive black hole discovered so far, co-author and University of Cambridge astronomer Jan Scholtz told the AFP news agency.

Black holes themselves devour light
The question of how it could grow so quickly within such a short time after the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago will provide new information “for the next generation of theoretical models” about black hole formation, Scholtz said.

Black holes have such strong gravity that even light cannot escape them. Like all black holes, the newly discovered black hole is invisible and was only discovered by the powerful explosions of light that occur when matter is devoured, the study continued.

Hubble telescope discovered galaxy
It was this light that allowed the Hubble Space Telescope to discover its host galaxy GN-z11 in 2016 – the oldest and most distant galaxy at the time. However, Hubble did not discover the black hole at the center of the Milky Way.

Normally, it takes hundreds of millions – if not billions – of years for black holes to form in galaxies. Stephane Charlot, co-author of the study and an astrophysicist in Paris, now suspects that black holes could have formed differently in the early days of the universe than later.

The origin is still a mystery
For example, they could have been formed by the explosion of particularly massive stars that only existed in the early universe, Charlot said. Alternatively, they could have been formed by the “direct collapse of a dense gas cloud without going through the star formation phase,” he added. The hole could then have swallowed the abundant gas around it, causing it to grow rapidly.

Scholtz emphasized that everything known so far about the GN-z11 black hole “does not rule out any of these scenarios.” The scientist hopes that the Webb and other telescopes, such as the European Space Agency’s Euclid Telescope, will discover even more black holes from the early days of the universe.

James Webb Telescope explores the cosmos
The James Webb Telescope, which was also built with German participation, was launched into space in December 2021 after decades of preparation. It is now over one and a half million kilometers from Earth.

It explores the early days of the cosmos, just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, about 13.8 billion years ago. Astronomers hope to be able to draw conclusions about the formation of the first stars and galaxies.