James Webb Space Telescope discovers ‘extremely red’ supermassive black hole eating everything around it

Using the James Webb Space Telescope, scientists have discovered an ‘extremely red’ supermassive black hole from the beginning of the universe that is rapidly eating everything around it.

Launched into space by NASA just over two years ago, the hi-tech device spends its days taking pictures of some of the mysterious happenings in deep space.

At a cost of $10 billion, it is already proving its worth with some of the bizarre and amazing discoveries it has made so far.

It uses the Near-InfraRed Camera (NIRCam) to present images we couldn’t comprehend with our own eyes.

And it has been crucial in the field of black hole exploration, making astonishing discoveries that scientists “thought were impossible.”

The black hole goodness doesn’t stop there: the JWST is now being used to discover another supermassive black hole that has been lurking since the early days of the universe.

Leading the discovery are doctor Lukas Furtak and professor Adi Zitrin of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel.

CGI of what a red black hole looks like (Getty Stock Images)

Their research showed that the supermassive black hole has about 40 times the mass of our Sun; making it an absolute monster compared to the galaxy it resides in.

Fortunately for Earth and the solar system, it’s not close.

We’re talking quite a distance at 12.9 billion light years away from our planet.

But it’s getting closer as the black hole rapidly devours everything around it. That’s where the reddish color comes from, indicating that it’s in a thick veil of dust that blocks most light.

Dr. Furtak said: “We were very excited when JWST started sending its first data.

CGI of what the James Webb Space Telescope will look like as it soars through the cosmos (Getty Stock Images)

“We were scanning the data coming in for the UNCOVER program and three very compact but red blooming objects stood out and caught our attention.

“Their ‘red-dot’ appearance immediately led us to suspect it was a quasar-like object (supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies that are actively collecting material).”

Prof. Jenny Greene of Princeton University, and one of the lead authors of the recent paper, said: ‘All the light from that galaxy must fit into a small area the size of a modern-day star cluster.

‘The magnification of the source by gravitational lensing gave us excellent limits on its size. Even if we packed all possible stars into such a small area, the black hole would ultimately account for at least one percent of the total mass of the system.

The last known image from the James Webb Space Telescope (Arianespace, ESA, NASA, CSA, CNES)

‘In fact, several other supermassive black holes in the early Universe have now been found to exhibit similar behavior, leading to some intriguing images of the growth of black holes and host galaxies, and the interactions between them, which are not yet well understood. “

Astronomers don’t know whether such supermassive black holes arise from stellar remnants, for example, or perhaps from material that collapsed directly into black holes in the early universe.

Featured image credits: Getty Stock Images

Topics: James Webb space telescope, space, science, weird, education, NASA, world news