Produced by: Tarun Mishra Designed by: Manoj Kumar
Utilizing the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers have uncovered the most distant merger between supermassive black holes ever observed.
The colliding black holes, residing at the centers of merging galaxies, have offered a glimpse into the universe's past, occurring just 740 million years post-Big Bang.
Astronomers have found evidence suggesting that supermassive black holes have played a pivotal role in shaping cosmic evolution since the universe's infancy.
Credit : ESA
JWST's findings have challenged previous assumptions about the growth of supermassive black holes in the early universe, shedding light on their rapid development.
Supermassive black holes at the heart of active galactic nuclei (AGN) emit powerful emissions known as quasars, illuminating their feeding processes.
JWST's Near-InfraRed Spectrograph (NIRSpec) has enabled astronomers to study merging quasars, providing unprecedented insights into their dynamics.
Astronomers have estimated one black hole involved in the merger to have a mass equivalent to 50 million suns, with the potential for the other to possess similar mass.
The eventual merger of these black holes is expected to have produced gravitational waves, potentially detectable by future instruments like LISA.
JWST's ongoing investigations into early supermassive black holes have further elucidated their role in cosmic evolution, offering invaluable insights into the universe's formation.