Astronomers used the James Webb Space Telescope to spot the most distant black hole merger ever observed.
The merger took place in a galaxy system known as ZS7 when the universe was still very young, regarding 740 million years following the Big Bang.
The international team of astronomers managed to detect the ongoing merger of two galaxies and their supermassive black holes when the universe was only 740 million years old. It is the first time in history that this phenomenon has been detected so early in the universe. One of the two black holes has a mass that is 50 million times the mass of the Sun.
“The mass of the other black hole is probably similar, although it is very difficult to measure because this second one is buried in dense gas,” explains Roberto Maiolino from the University of Cambridge and University College London and a member of the research team . The observed galaxy system is known as ZS7.
“Our findings suggest that mergers are an important pathway through which black holes can grow rapidly, even at the cosmic dawn. Along with other Webb findings of active, massive black holes in the distant universe, our results also show that massive black holes shape the evolution of galaxies from the start,” explains lead study author Hannah Ubler from the University of Cambridge.
According to newsit, the team notes that once the two black holes merge, they will create gravitational waves. An event as large as this one will be detectable by the next generation of gravitational wave observatories, such as the European Space Agency’s recently commissioned LISA mission.
The results of the research were published in the journal “Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society”.
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