A Single, ‘Naked’ Black Hole Rewrites the History of the Universe
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Summary
An enormous black hole has been spotted in the early universe that doesn’t appear to be surrounded by a galaxy.
Astronomers used the James Webb Space Telescope to find the large black hole, which is three times bigger than those found at the centres of galaxies and not thought to be surrounded by a galaxy.
A Professor of astrophysics at the University of Cambridge called the discovery “completely off the scale” and said it could date back to the Big Bang.
British physicist Stephen Hawking proposed in 1971 that these so-called ‘primordial’ black holes could have formed in the early universe and lurked unactivated until the galaxies that eventually formed around them began to emit light.
The Webb telescope has found over 300 similar objects, which could also be a new type of black hole.
