Those who thought that all the great discoveries in space had already been made were obviously mistaken. Thanks to the new technology that astronomers have today, unthinkable things are being discovered. For example, a new report reveals that experts have never considered that so many black holes could exist. What has changed and what do we know about them?
The ban has been opened for the discovery of black holes. More and more are being discovered and with more varied characteristics. Specialists have reached a point where they are overwhelmed and are aware that the boost given by the James Webb telescope to space exploration has been even greater than they expected. Now they have to work quickly to understand these black holes and what they might mean for the universe.
Much more than expected
Says Rebecca Larson of New York’s Rochester Institute of Technology, now is when we’re studying parts of the universe we’ve never had access to before. And we didn’t have it because the technology we had at the time was not enough. There was no way to analyze, explore and study as far as now. But what the specialists also advise is that we should not get carried away by enthusiasm, because the journey has only just begun.
The new power that James Webb brings to astronomers is still new. And it is opening additional avenues of investigation that force all the processes to be reformulated. The more data to analyze, the more effort and time researchers need. Therefore, you have to be patient, since the discoveries will come. When it comes to black holes, there is much to discover.
Black holes of all sizes
The characteristics of black holes are a fascinating thing. There are some that are very bright, others that are darker, and they also differ remarkably in terms of their volume in size. Not all black holes are at the same distance and, in fact, we are increasingly discovering those that are in more distant parts of the universe.
Scientists want to understand precisely what causes a black hole to start swallowing everything around it. They also want to know more about how they formed and the nature of their presence in space. For now, there are many theories that can answer some of these questions. For example, some astronomers suggest that the formation of the colossal black holes that have been discovered, some of proportions even larger than that of the Sun, occurred due to a cosmic collapse.
Thus, a chain reaction would have caused a series of explosions in gas clouds, stars and other possible bodies, which combined with dust to end up becoming black holes. That would be one of the possible explanations, but experts are open to other theories and to delve into the existence of these celestial bodies in a deeper way. One of the changes that have benefited from using James Webb has been that now they no longer have to limit themselves to, for example, only finding bright black holes.
In the future, by the time more powerful tools are available than the telescope being used now, it may even be possible to discover and delve deeper into black holes. Due to this, astronomers remain optimistic that, little by little, they will discover everything. For now, the most distant black hole that has been found is in the galaxy GN-z11. Not so distant, but equally spectacular, the black hole in the galaxy CEERS 1019 surprises because its mass has grown to an incredible extent. According to the analyses, its mass grew to 9 million times that of the Sun, something that happened in the first hundreds of years from the origin of the universe.
With these discoveries and how impressive the study of black holes is, researchers are moving forward and hopefully they can move forward in the future. After all, their work is going to pile up, since, with James Webb, more black holes will most likely continue to be reported as discoveries.
