Evidence for heavy-seed origin of early supermassive black holes from a z ≈ 10 X-ray quasar
Observations of quasars reveal that many supermassive black holes (BHs) were in place less than 700 Myr after the Big Bang. However, the origin of the first BHs remains a mystery. Seeds of the first BHs are postulated to be either light (that is, 10−100 M⊙), remnants of the first stars, or heavy (that is, 10−105 M⊙), originating from the direct collapse of gas clouds. Here, harnessing recent data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory, we report the detection of an X-ray-luminous massive BH in a gravitationally lensed galaxy identified by the James Webb Sp...
Source: nature.com