NextFin news, An international team of astronomers, led by the Cosmic Frontier Center at the University of Texas at Austin, has confirmed the existence of the most distant black hole ever identified. This black hole, located in the galaxy CAPERS-LRD-z9, existed approximately 500 million years after the Big Bang, placing it 13.3 billion years in the past, when the universe was only about 3% of its current age.
The findings were published in the Astrophysical Journal on August 6, 2025. The research team utilized data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), specifically from its CANDELS-Area Prism Epoch of Reionization Survey (CAPERS) program, which aims to study the most distant galaxies.
Anthony Taylor, a postdoctoral researcher and lead author of the study, stated, "When looking for black holes, this is about as far back as you can practically go. We’re really pushing the boundaries of what current technology can detect." The team employed spectroscopy to analyze the light emitted from the galaxy, searching for the characteristic signatures of fast-moving gas around the black hole.
CAPERS-LRD-z9 is part of a newly identified class of galaxies referred to as "Little Red Dots," which are compact, red, and unexpectedly bright. These galaxies are believed to have existed only in the first 1.5 billion years of the universe. Steven Finkelstein, a co-author of the study, noted that the discovery of these galaxies was surprising, as they do not resemble those observed by the Hubble Space Telescope.
The black hole at the center of CAPERS-LRD-z9 is estimated to have a mass of up to 300 million times that of the Sun, which is significant even among supermassive black holes. This discovery raises questions about the growth rates of early black holes, suggesting they may have formed much faster than previously thought or started out more massive than current models predict.
The research team plans to conduct further observations using the JWST to gain more insights into the characteristics of CAPERS-LRD-z9 and the role of black holes in the early universe. Taylor remarked, "We haven’t been able to study early black hole evolution until recently, and we are excited to see what we can learn from this unique object." Additional data for this research was also obtained from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument at Kitt Peak National Observatory.
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