Webb Directly Measures 50-Million-Solar-Mass Black Hole That Predates Galaxy 700 Million Years After Big Bang
Updated
Updated · Science@NASA · May 27
Webb Directly Measures 50-Million-Solar-Mass Black Hole That Predates Galaxy 700 Million Years After Big Bang
4 articles · Updated · Science@NASA · May 27
QSO1’s black hole was directly weighed at about 50 million solar masses, marking the first direct black-hole mass measurement within the universe’s first billion years.
Webb’s NIRSpec IFU mapped hydrogen gas in Keplerian rotation around a central point, showing most of QSO1’s mass is concentrated in the black hole rather than in stars.
Two-thirds of QSO1’s total mass appears to sit in the black hole, while the surrounding gas has less than 0.5% of the Sun’s metallicity, indicating an extremely pristine, weakly developed host galaxy.
The object existed just 700 million years after the Big Bang and is easier to study because galaxy cluster Abell 2744 gravitationally magnifies it and creates three images.
The result strengthens the case that some early supermassive black holes were born large—through direct collapse or primordial heavy seeds—and may have started building galaxies around themselves later.
Are these early black holes truly naked, or are their galaxies just invisible to our best telescopes?
How did supermassive black holes form before the galaxies that were supposed to create them?
The Discovery of QSO1: A Supermassive, Star-Poor Black Hole in the Early Universe and Its Implications for Primordial Black Holes
Overview
QSO1 is a supermassive black hole discovered by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) in the universe’s infancy, just 600–700 million years after the Big Bang. Using advanced techniques like gravitational lensing and spectroscopic analysis, JWST measured QSO1’s mass at about 50 million times that of the Sun. What makes QSO1 remarkable is its 'naked' appearance, with very few surrounding stars or gas, and an extreme black hole-to-galaxy mass ratio. This suggests the black hole may have formed before its host galaxy fully developed, challenging conventional ideas about how black holes and galaxies grow together in the early universe.