The Weirdness of Early Universe SMBHs Gets Even Weirder

This JWST NIRCam image shows Abell2744-QSO1, a prototypical Little Red Dot (LRD) discovered by the JWST. QS01 is magnified and tripled by gravitational lensing from the galaxy cluster Abell 2744. When scientists studied it in detail, they found a 50 million solar mass supermassive black hole (SMBH). It contains twice as much mass as its galaxy, throwing a curveball at astrophysicists trying to understand the growth of SMBH. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, L. Furtak (Ben-Gurion University), R. Maiolino (Cambridge), F. D'Eugenio (Cambridge), I. Juodžbalis (Cambridge), H. Übler (MPE), C. Marconcini (University of Florence). Image processing: A. Pagan

The JWST has shown us some strange things about supermassive black holes (SMBH) in the early Universe. Many of them are far more massive than we think they should be. Now astronomers working with the JWST have found one that seems to have formed before its galaxy did.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*