![\"This](\"https:\/\/cdn.sci.news\/images\/enlarge13\/image_14803e-Abell-2744-QSO1.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nThis Webb\/NIRCam image shows the little red dot Abell2744-QSO1, magnified and triply imaged by galaxy cluster Abell 2744. Image credit: NASA \/ ESA \/ CSA \/ Lukas Furtak, Ben-Gurion University \/ Alyssa Pagan, STScI.<\/p>\n
Abell 2744-QSO1<\/a> (QSO1 for short) is a prototypical \u2018little red dot<\/a>\u2019 that existed just 700 million years after the Big Bang.<\/p>\n Although QSO1 is only 1,300 light-years across, and its light has been traveling for more than 13 billion years, it is easier to study than most other little red dots because it is gravitationally lensed by the galaxy cluster Abell 2744<\/a>.<\/p>\n QSO1 is both magnified and triply imaged, appearing in three different locations in the sky.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a remarkable finding,\u201d said Dr. Roberto Maiolino, an astronomer at the University of Cambridge.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a paradigm shift, a total revisiting of the classical scenarios of how black holes form and grow.\u201d<\/p>\n Initial studies of QSO1 revealed compelling evidence that it may be little more than a cloud of glowing hydrogen and helium gas circling a supermassive black hole estimated at 40 million times the mass of the Sun.<\/p>\n But as with other early black holes discovered by Webb, there was uncertainty about whether it really was that massive.<\/p>\n \u201cBefore now, all of the mass measurements of black holes in the early Universe have been indirect, based on assumptions from what we know about them in the local Universe,\u201d said Dr. Francesco D\u2019Eugenio, also from the University of Cambridge.<\/p>\n \u201cWe didn\u2019t know if those assumptions really apply to the distant Universe.\u201d<\/p>\n The astronomers used<\/a> the integral field unit (IFU) on Webb\u2019s NIRSpec instrument to map motions of hydrogen gas surrounding the black hole.<\/p>\n When they plotted the rotation velocity as a function of distance from the center, they found that the gas has Keplerian motion: it orbits a central point in the same way that planets in our Solar System orbit the Sun.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is important because it tells us that most of the mass of QSO1 is concentrated in the black hole at the center,\u201d said University of Cambridge graduate student Ignas Juod\u017ebalis.<\/p>\n \u201cIf the mass were more distributed, as it would be if there were a lot of stars, the gas would not have this perfect Keplerian rotation.\u201d<\/p>\n Since Keplerian motion is governed by simple laws of gravity, the researchers were able to use the gas velocity measurements to calculate the black hole mass directly, a feat that had not previously been possible.<\/p>\n They found that not only is the black hole immense (roughly 50 million solar masses), it makes up \u2014 at minimum \u2014 an astonishing two-thirds of QSO1\u2019s total mass.<\/p>\n This proportion is thousands of times greater than in nearby galaxies, where supermassive black holes make up only a tiny fraction of the host galaxy\u2019s total mass.<\/p>\n The IFU composition maps supported<\/a> these results, showing that the gas throughout QSO1 is almost entirely hydrogen and helium, with very little of the heavier elements like oxygen that would be expected in a galaxy rich with stars and stellar debris.<\/p>\n With a metallicity less than 0.5% of the Sun, QSO1 is one of the most pristine galactic environments ever measured.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a phenomenal result,\u201d said Dr. Cosimo Marconcini, an astronomer at the University of Florence.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is the first direct measurement of a black hole mass within the first billion years after the Big Bang, and it is consistent with the previous measurements.\u201d<\/p>\n The outsized mass of QSO1 relative to its host galaxy suggests that it can\u2019t have formed gradually from much smaller, stellar-mass black holes merging and feeding<\/p>\n \u201cIt seems that we have found a black hole that does not have a substantial host galaxy and that has predated stellar processes,\u201d Juod\u017ebalis said.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is very exciting because it is evidence for primordial black holes or direct collapse black holes, which have been theorized but not confirmed.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhether QSO1\u2019s black hole evolved from a heavy seed that formed within the first second of the Big Bang or somewhat later from the collapse of a giant cloud of gas, it was almost certainly born big, and may be in the early stages of building a galaxy around it.\u201d<\/p>\n The results appear in two papers in the journal Nature<\/a> and the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society<\/a>.<\/p>\n _____<\/p>\n I. Juod\u017ebalis et al. 2026. A direct black-hole mass measurement in a little red dot at high redshift. Nature 653, 1017-1021; doi: 10.1038\/s41586-026-10579-4<\/p>\n Roberto Maiolino et al. 2026. A black hole in a near pristine galaxy 700 Myr after the Big Bang. MNRAS 548 (1): staf2109; doi: 10.1093\/mnras\/staf2109<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Astronomers using the NASA\/ESA\/CSA James Webb Space Telescope have found an enormous black hole in the early Universe…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":672089,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[293209,293210,274579,12272,160200,44060,12474,9004,190106,121101,43874,194925,293211,197367,293212,718,79,193,36107,8371,12269],"class_list":["post-672088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-a2744-qso1","tag-abell-2744","tag-abell-2744-qso1","tag-black-hole","tag-csa","tag-early-universe","tag-esa","tag-galaxy","tag-galaxy-cluster","tag-gravitational-lens","tag-hydrogen","tag-ir","tag-keplerian-motion","tag-little-red-dot","tag-metallicity","tag-nasa","tag-science","tag-space","tag-supermassive-black-hole","tag-universe","tag-webb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=672088"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672088\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/672089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=672088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=672088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=672088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}