Tag

Cosmic Dawn

All articles tagged with #cosmic dawn

science1 day ago•9 min saved

JWST Discovers a Black Hole Star Buried in Hydrogen at Cosmic Dawn

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope spotted MoM-BH*-1, a compact, red, ultra-bright source from just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang that is too luminous for nuclear fusion. The leading model places a ~100,000-solar-mass black hole inside a dense hydrogen envelope, with accretion energy reprocessed by the surrounding gas to produce star-like light. If confirmed, this “black hole star” could reveal how massive black holes grow in the early universe and help explain JWST’s mysterious little red dots.

via SciTechDaily|

#astronomy #black-holes #cosmic-dawn

space8 days ago•3 min saved

James Webb Spots a New Class of Star Fueled by Black Holes

Using the James Webb Space Telescope, scientists identified a new object class—'black hole stars'—dense gas clouds fully enveloping a black hole that are powered by the black hole’s energy rather than fusion, yielding a brightness about 100 billion times that of a normal star. These objects appear as extremely bright red dots in Webb’s deep-field images from the cosmic dawn, implying such systems formed in the early universe and could shed light on how supermassive black holes arise; they are not accretion disks and require further study.

via jalopnik.com|

#accretion-disk #black-hole-star #cosmic-dawn

science11 days ago•3 min saved

Lunar Far Side Mission Aims to Listen to the Universe’s First Light

Researchers plan a two‑year mission called CosmoCube, a suitcase‑sized satellite to orbit the Moon’s far side and detect the 21cm radio signal from neutral hydrogen in the early universe, using it as a thermometer to study the dark ages through the cosmic dawn and into reionization; the far side should mitigate Earth‑based interference and ionospheric noise, with a total cost under £50m and funding from the UK Space Agency, aiming for launch about five years from now.

via The Guardian|

#21cm-line #cosmic-dawn #cosmocube

science13 days ago•52 min saved

Gas-drenched black hole at cosmic dawn hints at rapid early growth

New JWST observations reveal MoM-BH*-1, a z≈7.76 source with an extreme Balmer break, broad Hβ emission, and strong Balmer absorption best explained by a supermassive black hole enshrouded in an extremely dense, nearly dust-free gas envelope. The envelope (nH ~10^11 cm−3, NH ~10^25.8 cm−2, turbulence ~500 km/s) produces a UV-weak, Balmer-break-dominated spectral energy distribution with little host-galaxy light, suggesting possible super-Eddington accretion. This implies rapid black-hole growth in the early universe and cautions that Balmer-line widths under such conditions may overestimate BH masses by up to ~2 dex; the host is a faint, low-mass dwarf galaxy. The finding links to the broader population of “little red dots” and challenges conventional SMBH growth models at cosmic dawn.

via Nature|

#balmer-break #black-hole #cosmic-dawn

science23 days ago•15 min saved

Webb Telescope Rewrites the Rules of the Early Universe

The James Webb Space Telescope’s look back to the first billion years of the cosmos is upending standard theories with unexpected finds — from a deluge of little red dots and surprisingly massive black holes to diverse, bursty early galaxies — spurring new ideas like direct-collapse seeds, super-Eddington accretion, and refined simulations to explain cosmic dawn and galaxy formation.

via WIRED|

#black-holes #cosmic-dawn #early-universe

space27 days ago•10 min saved

Webb Telescope Turns Time Machine, Revealing Galaxies Moments After the Big Bang

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope uses its larger 6.5-meter mirror and infrared vision to peer back to the universe’s earliest epochs, capturing galaxies formed within a few hundred million years after the Big Bang and pushing the record beyond Hubble’s reach (e.g., MoM-z14 at ~13.5 billion years ago). Webb reveals a cosmic dawn that is brighter and more chemically evolved than pre‑Webb models predicted, with some galaxies seen just 50–300 million years after the Big Bang—reminding us that each image is both a snapshot of the present instrument and a window into a long-ago cosmos that has since evolved.

via spacedaily.com|

#cosmic-dawn #early-galaxies #infrared-astronomy

space1 month ago•13 min saved

JWST Spots Crowded Galaxy Merger at Cosmic Dawn Enriching Surrounding Gas

JWST has imaged JWST’s Quintet, a merger of at least five galaxies at redshift ~6.7 (about 800 million years after the Big Bang), revealing a compact, clumpy system with ~17 galaxy-sized clumps, a combined star-formation rate around 255 solar masses per year, and a halo of oxygen-emitting gas (O III) and Hβ linking the galaxies. The presence of metal-enriched gas around the system shows heavy elements were already dispersed into the surrounding medium by intense interactions, implying the early universe was chemically mature and dynamically complex far earlier than some models predict and potentially related to the emergence of massive, quiescent galaxies later on.

via Space Daily|

#circumgalactic-medium #cosmic-dawn #galaxy-mergers

space1 month ago•12 min saved

SKA-Low Delivers Strong First Light With Only 1% of Antennas

In March 2025, SKA-Low produced its first image using 1,024 antennas out of 131,072, spotting 85 galaxies and exceeding expectations, proving the array’s design works and signaling far deeper surveys as hundreds of stations come online to enable the cosmic-dawn science.

via Space Daily|

#astronomy #cosmic-dawn #radio-astronomy

space2 months ago•6 min saved

Ancient Flickering Quasar Reveals Early Growth of Supermassive Black Holes

Astronomers report the discovery of J0439+1634, the oldest known flickering quasar, whose light has traveled more than 13 billion years to Earth, dating to the cosmic dawn when the Universe was about 850 million years old. The quasar appears to host a pancake-shaped, surprisingly mature accretion disk feeding a supermassive black hole over 600 million solar masses, making it extremely bright. Multi-wavelength data, including NEOWISE infrared observations, show irregular flickering driven by variable gas inflow, providing direct clues about early black hole growth and enabling new mass-measurement approaches. The study suggests growth processes seen in nearby quasars were already in place early on, and future facilities like the Vera C. Rubin Observatory and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will hunt for even earlier examples.

via ScienceAlert|

#accretion-disk #black-hole #cosmic-dawn

space2 months ago•10 min saved

Webb’s Early Galaxies Are Brighter and Earlier Than Expected, Rewriting Star-Formation Timelines

The James Webb Space Telescope has spectroscopically confirmed MoM-z14, the most distant galaxy yet at redshift about 14.44 (light from ~280 million years after the Big Bang), joining a growing population of UV-bright galaxies brighter and more common than pre‑Webb models predicted. This prompts a revision of how quickly the first galaxies formed stars, while cosmology remains intact; explanations include more efficient early star formation, bursty activity, top-heavy stellar populations, reduced dust, and contributions from accreting black holes. Ongoing and future spectroscopy will measure how common these galaxies are and improve chemical enrichment estimates, such as oxygen detection, to sharpen the picture of the early universe.

via Space Daily|

#cosmic-dawn #early-galaxies #james-webb-space-telescope

space4 months ago•6 min saved

Tiny Dwarfs, Big Light: Dwarf Galaxies Reionized the Early Universe

New JWST and Hubble observations reveal ultra-faint dwarf galaxies were the primary engines of cosmic reionization, outnumbering large galaxies 100 to 1 and collectively emitting enough ionizing radiation to turn neutral hydrogen into ionized gas, effectively lighting up the early Universe by about a billion years after the Big Bang.

via ScienceAlert|

#abell-2744 #cosmic-dawn #dwarf-galaxies

space6 months ago•78 min saved

JWST spots the universe’s most distant galaxy MoM-z14, challenging early-universe predictions

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has detected MoM-z14, the farthest galaxy observed to date, about 13.5 billion years back (roughly 280 million years after the Big Bang). The galaxy is brighter, more compact, and chemically enriched than expected for such an early epoch, challenging existing models of early star and galaxy formation and suggesting the early universe may have evolved more rapidly than theories predicted.

via Space|

#cosmic-dawn #early-universe #high-redshift-galaxy

science7 months ago•9 min saved

Webb Reveals Young Black Holes Behind Red Dots

New analysis of James Webb Space Telescope images shows the universe’s “little red dots” are not distant galaxies but young, enshrouded black holes (up to ~10 million solar masses) rapidly accreting gas in dense cocoons. The heat from infalling material glows through the cocoon, producing the red hue. Hundreds have been identified, offering clues to how supermassive black holes could form within the first 700 million years after the Big Bang. The findings, published in Nature on Jan 14, 2026 by the Cosmic Dawn Centre at the University of Copenhagen, describe these “messy eaters” that grow quickly while pushing away much of the incoming gas.

via SciTechDaily|

#black-holes #cosmic-dawn #early-universe

science8 months ago•3 min saved

James Webb Space Telescope: A New Era in Cosmic Observation

Launched on December 25, 2021, the James Webb Space Telescope has significantly advanced our understanding of the universe by capturing detailed images of the early cosmos, confirming existing theories, and raising new questions about cosmic evolution, exoplanets, and black holes, despite initial delays and budget overruns.

via Live Science|

#cosmic-dawn #exoplanets #infrared-imaging

science8 months ago•4 min saved

James Webb Telescope Spots Earliest Supernova in the Universe

Scientists using the James Webb Space Telescope may have discovered the earliest supernova in the universe, occurring just 730 million years after the Big Bang, providing new insights into early star and galaxy evolution, and potentially marking the most distant supernova observed to date.

via Yahoo|

#cosmic-dawn #early-universe #gamma-ray-burst