A black hole of inexplicable mass
The black hole already weighed a billion solar masses when the universe was still in its infancy
Artist's impression of the bright core region of a quasar, an active galaxy. The supermassive black hole in the centre is surrounded by a bright disk of gas and dust. The dust component further out can obscure the view of the interior and shines predominantly in the mid-infrared range, light that can be analysed by the James Webb Space Telescope. A bundled, high-energy particle beam protrudes into space from the immediate vicinity of the black hole perpendicular to the disc. The James Webb Space Telescope observed a galaxy in a particularly young stage of the universe. Looking back into the past, it became clear that the light from the galaxy called J1120+0641 took almost as long to reach Earth as the universe has taken to develop to the present day. It is inexplicable how the black hole at its centre could have weighed over a billion solar masses back then, as independent measurements have shown. Recent observations of the material in close vicinity to the black hole were supposed to reveal a particularly efficient feeding mechanism, but they found nothing particular. ...TO READ THIS ARTICLE, CREATE YOUR ACCOUNT
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