James Webb Space Telescope makes ‘exciting’ discovery about origins of ‘monster’ black holes

Scientists from one of the world's leading universities have made an 'exciting' discovery when it comes to 'monster' black holes floating through the cosmos thanks to the genius that is the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

Knowledge of black holes and what they do has fascinated astronomers for decades, with them becoming a mainstay in pop culture through the growth of science fiction books, films, and TV shows. Interstellar anyone?

The first photo of a black hole was captured around five years ago, meaning we have so much more to learn about what what lies beyond the event horizon.

Now, astronomers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology - or MIT as its commonly referred to by pretty much everybody - have used the $10 billion JWST to track some of the earliest 'monster' black holes to exist in the universe.

And their findings are pretty eye-opening.

The MIT scientists have been looking into starlight surrounding six of the universe's oldest quasars, which are massive bright pockets of light, matter and energy that surround supermassive black holes.

And when we say old we mean it. Some 13 billion years old in this case as part of efforts to reveal how these very first black holes might have been created alongside the earliest galaxies.

On this occasion, the MIT team for the first time observed the much fainter light from stars in the host galaxies of three ancient quasars.

NASA concept art for a huge quasar. (NASA, ESA and J. Olmsted (STScI))

Based on this elusive stellar light, the team estimated the mass of each host galaxy, compared to the mass of its central supermassive black hole.

Their research found that for these quasars, the central black holes were much more massive relative to their host galaxies, compared to their modern counterparts.

This could be groundbreaking in what we know about supermassive black holes and their history, with the MIT astronomers saying these monster black holes may have sprouted from more massive 'seed' than more newer black holes did.

Minghao Yue, a postdoc in MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, was the author of the study. He said: "After the universe came into existence, there were seed black holes that then consumed material and grew in a very short time.

James Webb Space Telescope. (NASA/Getty Stock Image)

"One of the big questions is to understand how those monster black holes could grow so big, so fast.

"There must have been some mechanism to make a black hole gain their mass earlier than their host galaxy in those first billion years. It’s kind of the first evidence we see for this, which is exciting."

The findings, published on Monday (6 May) in the Astrophysical Journal, revealed that the black holes are billions of times more massive than Earth's Sun.

Study author Anna-Christina Eilers, assistant professor of physics at MIT, said: “Our results imply that in the early universe, supermassive black holes might have gained their mass before their host galaxies did, and the initial black hole seeds could have been more massive than today.”

A James Webb Telescope image shows the J0148 quasar circled in red. Two insets show, on top, the central black hole, and on bottom, the stellar emission from the host galaxy. (NASA)

To put this in to perspective, these ancient supermassive black holes were about one tenth of the mass of their host galaxy. Modern black holes are roughly one 1,000th of the mass.

Eilers added: “We see that black holes in the early universe seem to be growing faster than their host galaxies. That is tentative evidence that the initial black hole seeds could have been more massive back then.”