The Webb telescope has observed quasars where they shouldn’t be. Something is wrong with the theory of black holes

The James Webb Space Telescope has observed solitary quasars in the early universe, a discovery that challenges current theories of how supermassive black holes formed after the Big Bang.

A little context. A quasar is an extremely luminous region at the center of a newborn galaxy, fueled by the accretion of gas and dust from a supermassive black hole. They are the brightest and hottest objects in the cosmos, and they serve as a beacon for us to study the early universe.

Astronomers believed that the first quasars had formed in areas with a high density of dark matter, so they were surrounded by many galaxies. However, the James Webb Space Telescope has observed ancient quasars that appear to be found in regions with few neighboring galaxies, which does not fit current cosmological models.

Why it is important. The presence of solitary quasars discovered by the Webb telescope challenges the idea that these objects formed in the densest regions of the early universe.

The finding suggests just the opposite: that supermassive black holes can grow in less dense environments. However, cosmological models do not contemplate formation mechanisms that fit this idea. Once again, Webb has called into question what we know about the universe.

The discovery, in detail. An MIT team harnessed the power of the Webb Space Telescope to observe the faint lights reaching us from the early universe, 13 billion years ago.

Led by astronomer Anna-Christina Eilers, researchers distinguished five ancient quasarssome in dense fields, with more than 50 nearby galaxies, and others in almost empty regions. The existence of quasars in areas with few surrounding galaxies raised the question of how they could grow so quickly without enough matter to feed on.

The conclusions. The study suggests that quasars are not necessarily found in the highest density regions of the early universe. Some seem to be in the middle of nowhere.

The discovery seems to imply the existence of unknown processes that allowed black holes to grow rapidly after the Big Bang.

And now what. Researchers plan to search for galaxies that could be obscured by cosmic dust around lone quasars. If they don’t find them, they will confirm their suspicions: we will have to adjust the theories of how the most massive structures in the early universe formed.

Image | NASA-JPL, Eilers et al.

In Xataka | The Webb telescope has managed to penetrate the core of a neighboring galaxy, home to a furiously active black hole