doi.org/10.1093/mnras/sty1122
Credibility: 989
#black hole
The James Webb Space Telescope, a collaboration between NASA, ESA, and the Canadian Space Agency, has revealed a surprising discovery about the early Universe
Using its exceptional imaging and spectroscopy power, astronomers mapped the movement and composition of the gas orbiting a black hole at the center of a tiny galaxy called Abell2744-QSO1, located more than 13 billion light-years away.
The results indicate that this black hole, with about 50 million solar masses, existed before the galaxy that hosts it, possibly having formed in the first moments after the Big Bang.
For a long time, scientists believed that galaxies formed first.
Massive stars within them exhausted their fuel, collapsed, and generated smaller black holes, which then grew by devouring surrounding material and merging with others.
However, it was difficult to explain how supermassive black holes-with millions or billions of times the mass of the Sun-could grow so rapidly in the young Universe.
Now, Webb’s observations provide clear evidence that some of these giant objects were born already enormous, without depending on a large galaxy for sustenance.
This galaxy, known as a “Little Red Dot,” emerged only 700 million years after the Big Bang.
Despite being only 1,300 light-years in diameter, it is easier to study thanks to the gravitational lensing effect caused by the Abell 2744 galaxy cluster, which magnifies it and projects it into three different images in the sky.
Previous studies had already suggested the presence of a very massive black hole, but the measurements were indirect and based on assumptions.
The team, led by researchers from the University of Cambridge and the University of Florence, used Webb’s NIRSpec instrument to map the hydrogen gas around the black hole.
They observed that the gas moves in perfect Keplerian orbits, like planets around the Sun, indicating that almost all the galaxy’s mass is concentrated at its center.
The black hole represents an impressive two-thirds of the system’s total mass-a proportion thousands of times greater than that found in nearby galaxies.
Furthermore, the gas is extremely pure, composed almost entirely of hydrogen and helium, with very few heavy elements, showing that there were still few stars in the galaxy.
Roberto Maiolino, from the University of Cambridge, highlighted that this represents a paradigm shift in understanding how black holes form and grow.
Ignas Juod”balis, a doctoral student involved in the work, explained that this black hole appears to have emerged before stellar processes, supporting theories about “heavy seeds” formed directly in the Big Bang or by the collapse of giant gas clouds.
This solves part of the enigma of how these cosmic monsters could have existed so early in the Universe.
This discovery suggests that objects like QSO1 were not rare in the early Universe.
Researchers are now analyzing other “Little Red Dots” to confirm whether many supermassive black holes actually preceded the galaxies that host them today.
The result reinforces the importance of the James Webb Space Telescope, which continues to reveal secrets of the distant cosmos and challenge our ideas about the evolution of the Universe.
This observation represents a historic advance: it is the first direct measurement of the mass of a black hole in the young Universe, validating previous measurements and opening new doors to understanding the birth of cosmic structures.
With Webb, humanity is advancing further in the search for answers about how the Universe organized itself after the Big Bang, showing that black holes may have been the first to form, acting as seeds for the galaxies we see today.
Published in 06/02/2026 19h14
Text adapted by AI (Grok) and translated via Google API in the English version. Images from public image libraries or credits in the caption. Information about DOI, author and institution can be found in the body of the article.
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