{"id":198980,"date":"2024-11-09T04:58:50","date_gmt":"2024-11-09T10:58:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/11\/observations-from-jwst-and-chandra-reveal-a-low-mass-supermassive-black-hole-that-appears-to-be-consuming-matter-at-over-40-times-the-theoretical-limit"},"modified":"2024-11-09T04:58:50","modified_gmt":"2024-11-09T10:58:50","slug":"observations-from-jwst-and-chandra-reveal-a-low-mass-supermassive-black-hole-that-appears-to-be-consuming-matter-at-over-40-times-the-theoretical-limit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/11\/observations-from-jwst-and-chandra-reveal-a-low-mass-supermassive-black-hole-that-appears-to-be-consuming-matter-at-over-40-times-the-theoretical-limit","title":{"rendered":"Observations from JWST and Chandra reveal a low-mass supermassive black hole that appears to be consuming matter at over 40 times the theoretical limit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/observations-from-jwst-and-chandra-reveal-a-low-mass-supermassive-black-hole-that-appears-to-be-consuming-matter-at-over-40-times-the-theoretical-limit2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Using data from NASA\u2019s JWST and Chandra X-ray Observatory, a team of U.S. National Science Foundation NOIRLab astronomers have discovered a supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy just 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang that is consuming matter at a phenomenal rate \u2014 over 40 times the theoretical limit. While short lived, this black hole\u2019s \u2018feast\u2019 could help astronomers explain how supermassive black holes grew so quickly in the early Universe.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Supermassive_black_hole\">Supermassive black holes<\/a> exist at the center of most galaxies, and modern telescopes continue to observe them at surprisingly early times in the Universe\u2019s evolution. It\u2019s difficult to understand how these black holes were able to grow so big so rapidly. But with the discovery of a low-mass supermassive black hole feasting on material at an extreme rate, seen just 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang, astronomers now have valuable new insights into the mechanisms of rapidly growing black holes in the early Universe.<\/p>\n<p>LID-568 was discovered by a cross-institutional team of astronomers led by International Gemini Observatory\/NSF NOIRLab astronomer Hyewon Suh. They used the James Webb Space Telescope (<a href=\"https:\/\/webbtelescope.org\/home\">JWST<\/a>) to observe a sample of galaxies from the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nasa.gov\/mission\/chandra-x-ray-observatory\/\">Chandra X-ray Observatory<\/a>\u2019s COSMOS legacy survey. This population of galaxies is very bright in the X-ray part of the spectrum, but are invisible in the optical and near-infrared. JWST\u2019s unique infrared sensitivity allows it to detect these faint counterpart emissions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Using data from NASA\u2019s JWST and Chandra X-ray Observatory, a team of U.S. National Science Foundation NOIRLab astronomers have discovered a supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy just 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang that is consuming matter at a phenomenal rate \u2014 over 40 times the theoretical limit. While short [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,385],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-198980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cosmology","category-evolution"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198980"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198980\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}