Record-Breaking Black Hole Discovered Near the Dawn of the Universe

Scientists just discovered a black hole so massive that it is almost equal to the galaxy that surrounds it — and it’s still growing. Incredibly, the black hole is also incredibly ancient, having likely formed not long after the universe itself did some 13.7 billion years ago.

Using the most distant X-Ray observations of a black hole ever, astronomers at NASA were able to peer at the black hole in unprecedented detail. Sitting inside a galaxy called UHZ1, which is some 13.2 billion light-years away from Earth, the black hole is believed to have the mass of as many as 100 million Suns.

Because of how quickly this black hole formed after the Big Bang, the observations offer new clues as to how these mysterious objects can get so massive so fast.

"There are physical limits on how quickly black holes can grow once they’ve formed, but ones that are born more massive have a head start," said Andy Goulding, an astrophysicist at Princeton University and co-author of a paper describing the discovery in a press release. "It’s like planting a sapling, which takes less time to grow into a full-size tree than if you started with only a seed."

Scientists had become fascinated by this far-off area of space after the James Webb Space Telescope picked up traces of ancient infrared light emanating from the distant galaxy.

Then, using NASA’s Chandra X-Ray observatory, the team of scientists observed UHZ1 for two weeks, picking up faint traces of X-Ray energy emitted by the cluster. By using a technique called gravitational lensing — in this case, a more recent galaxy cluster that essentially bent spacetime to act like a magnifying glass on the more distant objects beyond it — the astronomers glimpsed the supermassive black hole at the galaxy’s center. 

Because this black hole is so massive — it weighs the equivalent of all the stars in UHZ1 — Goulding and his team concluded that it has to have been born that way. For context, most black holes found in other galaxies tend to have a mass equivalent to 10% of the stars in their galaxy. 

"We think that this is the first detection of an ‘Outsize Black Hole’ and the best evidence yet obtained that some black holes form from massive clouds of gas," said Yale physicist Priyamvada Natarajan.

"For the first time we are seeing a brief stage where a supermassive black hole weighs about as much as the stars in its galaxy, before it falls behind."