This black hole, which is devouring its host galaxy GN-z11, which has a mass of 1.6 million times the mass of the Sun, was discovered thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope, and challenges cosmological theories, as such a massive black hole would not be expected. Hole in the early universe.
Invisible like all black holes, the one in the galaxy GN-z11 (which is a hundred times smaller than the Milky Way) absorbs surrounding matter, emitting an enormous amount of light into its surroundings.
It is this light that allowed astrophysicists to reveal in 2016 the galaxy containing the black hole at its center, which dates back to 430 million years after the Big Bang, a theory that describes the beginning of the universe (which is estimated to be 13.8 billion years old).
The time when the black hole formed corresponds to the cosmic “dawn,” when the first stars and galaxies were born after a period of darkness.
According to one of the authors of the article, Stephane Charlot, from the Paris Institute of Astrophysics, the properties of this black hole “suggest a faster and earlier growth than the growth of other black holes known from very ancient times.”
He added: “The mechanisms of black hole formation in the young universe may be different from those we know in the closer universe.”
For astrophysicist Roberto Maiolino, from the University of Cambridge, who also authored the discovery, “other ways” to explain the formation of the black hole in the galaxy GN-z11 should be considered, given that the universe at that time was “very young.” “To accommodate such a huge body.
