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Enormous black hole napping after eating a ton of gas
- The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has detected a dormant black hole that is laying dormant after consuming too much matter in the early universe, existing just 800 million years after the big bang.
- For a black hole this large (400 million times the mass of our sun), it is not actively eating gas, according to the scientists who discovered it.
- This black hole is so large that it makes up about 40% of the total mass of its host galaxy.
- Typically, black holes are detected by a tell-tale glow of a swirling accretion disc that forms near the black hole's edges and the gas in the accretion disc becomes extremely hot.
- According to the scientists, the most likely scenario to explain this is that black holes go through short bursts of ultra-fast growth and then long periods of dormancy.
- Their computer simulations show that the black holes can actually exceed the predicted limit and then grow very quickly before a long period of inactivity.
- Black holes such as this one likely eat for roughly five to 10 million years and then sleep for about 100 million years.
- Most of the black holes are expected to be in this dormant state, which makes it more challenging to detect them.
- These findings challenge the current understanding of how black holes develop.
- The team is excited to think there are so many more dormant black holes that could be found.
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