James Webb Telescope detects the collision of the most distant and oldest supermassive blackholes

James Webb telescope shows merging galaxies, supermassive blackholes: The findings have been published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, and could help astronomers understand the real reason for the rapid growth of the cosmos. (Image via X/esa_webb)

Astronomers have observed the merger of two most distant and oldest galaxies and their supermassive black holes, using the James Webb Telescope (JWST). Successor to NASA's Hubble Telescope, James Webb showed a glimpse of earliest galactic merger that occurred around 740 million years after Big Bang.

The JWST observations show a merger of two galaxies and black holes at their centres as it was happening when the universe was just 740 million years old, around a 20th of its current age.

The study shed light on how supermassive blackholes, with masses that are millions or even billions of times more than the sun, grow so big. Astronomers have speculated such massive blackholes to either being born big or to be gobbling up or accreting matter from its surrounding or during such mergers.

The latest observations by James Webb offer the first insights into the earliest occurrence of such galactic mergers.

During collision, the blackholes do gobble up huge amount of matter and also release a lot of energy that allow astronomers to identify them. This showed that the collision is underway in a system called ZS7.

It also revealed that one of the supermassive blackholes undergoing the merger is of 50 million times the mass of sun. The second blackhole is also estimated to have similar mass but is not clearly visible due to the dense gas cloud surrounding it.

The findings, published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, observed that a third of the blackholes at that time, 740 million years after the Big Bang, are in a process of merging, elucidating the real reason of rapid growth of the cosmos.

The study also confirms that supermassive blackholes at the centre of large galaxies have been responsible evolution of space fabric since the very beginning of universe.

The findings show that black holes can grow rapidly through mergers, and that these massive black holes have been shaping the evolution of galaxies since cosmic dawn. 3/4 pic.twitter.com/L4IHW3z9hT

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— ESA Webb Telescope (@ESA_Webb) May 16, 2024

Webb is the largest and most potent observatory ever carried into space that was launched in 2021 as the eventual replacement for NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.

Scientists hope that the eventual merger of these blackholes will result in gravitational waves that could be detected by the next generation of gravitational wave detectors, including the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (Lisa) mission, which was recently approved by the European Space Agency.