Astronomers detect oldest black hole ever observed. It's a million times the mass of Sun: Report

Astronomers have detected the oldest black hole ever observed, with around a million times the mass of the Sun. Citing observations published in Arxiv, a report by The Guardian on Sunday (Dec 10) said that the black hole dates back more than 13 billion years to the dawn of the universe. The observations, made by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), reveal it to be at the heart of a galaxy 440 million years after the big bang.

The observations of the GN-z11 galaxy, push the origins of this mystery back to black holes’ infancy and suggest that they were either born big or ballooned extremely rapidly early on, the report said.

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There is no direct image of the black hole captured, which is unseeable as no light can escape it. However, astronomers found telltale signatures of its accretion disk, the halo of gas and dust that swirls around the cosmic sinkhole.

A puzzle that seems to be deepening

Professor Roberto Maiolino, an astrophysicist at the University of Cambridge, who led the observations, said, “The surprise is in it being so very massive. That was the most unexpected thing.”

Professor Andrew Pontzen from University College London (UCL), who was not involved in the research, said the observations suggested that some black holes instead grew at a tremendous rate in the young universe, far faster than expected.

"Understanding where the black holes came from in the first place has always been a puzzle, but now that puzzle seems to be deepening," Professor Pontzen told the publication.

The observations are the latest in a series of stunning discoveries by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) space observatory.

What is a black hole?

According to NASA, a black hole is an astronomical object with a gravitational pull so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape it. Its surface is called the event horizon which defines the boundary where the velocity needed to escape exceeds the speed of light, which is the speed limit of the cosmos.

"Two main classes of black holes have been extensively observed. Stellar-mass black holes with three to dozens of times the Sun’s mass are spread throughout our Milky Way galaxy, while supermassive monsters weighing 100,000 to billions of solar masses are found in the centres of most big galaxies, ours included," NASA said.

Once formed, black holes can grow by accreting matter that falls into them, including gas stripped from neighbouring stars and even other black holes.

(With inputs from agencies)