Giant black holes were supposed to be bit players in the early cosmic story. But recent James Webb Space Telescope observations are finding an unexpected abundance of the beasts.

Observations from the James Webb Space Telescope have revealed a surprising number of young galaxies containing massive black holes at their centers, churning up the gas within only a few hundred million years after the Big Bang. Spectroscopic data indicates that these “hidden little monsters” harbor black holes weighing millions of solar masses. The abundance of growing baby black holes challenges theories about how supermassive black holes could have formed so early in the universe’s history. While astrophysicists expected JWST to find some early black holes, the sheer number uncovered has shocked astronomers and could rewrite models of galaxy and black hole formation. If confirmed, these observations suggest that massive black holes may have grown much faster than previously believed possible in the infant universe.

  • A_A
    5·
    1 year ago

    I do believe there is a strong link to be understood between what is observed in this post and what was posted :
    X-Ray echo suggests our galaxy was “active” (quasar-like) just 200 years ago - Nature
    by @CanadaPlus one month ago.
    Thanks for this (X-Ray echo) post and for the last comment you made here in the other thread, about Penroses’ current work.

    So I will read through some of this and try to come back with something worthwhile to say.

    Update : I read some more and most of that is just out of my reach. The only paragraph I kind of understand somewhat is this :

    (…) conformal cyclic cosmology (CCC) theory.[67] In this theory, Penrose postulates that at the end of the universe all matter is eventually contained within black holes which subsequently evaporate via Hawking radiation. At this point, everything contained within the universe consists of photons which “experience” neither time nor space. There is essentially no difference between an infinitely large universe consisting only of photons and an infinitely small universe consisting only of photons. Therefore, a singularity for a Big Bang and an infinitely expanded universe are equivalent. [68]

    …and now I need some rest.

    • maegul (he/they)@lemmy.mlEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      With all sincerity and seriousness …

      … kay

      What’s the implication then of Penrose’s idea? That no matter the trajectory of a universe some sort of “big bang” singularity is inevitable, or at least is so for many more trajectories than previously thought.

      • A_A
        2·
        1 year ago

        I read through these and try to understand them but mostly I don’t like those theories, because (in part) more and more there are disparities between them and observations.

        So I came up with some ideas myself, one of which I wrote in here :
        “New physical cosmological model : is it coherent ?”

        But it may take a few years or a few thousand before we have a good cosmology.