When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission.(Left): An illustration of a feeding supermassive black hole. (Right) The “red dots” identified in the region of the sky around the quasar J1030. BiRD is the object in the center: it stands out from the other red dots because it is closer and, therefore, brighter. | Credit: F. Loiacono, NASA, ESA, CSAUsing the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have discovered a ravenous supermassive black hole that existed during a period of the cosmos called “cosmic noon” that occurred around 4 billion years after the Big Bang. The discovery could further shine light on the mystery of how supermassive black holes grow to sizes of millions and even billions of times that of the sun.This black hole is part of a collection of objects the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has been discovering in the early cosmos called “little red dots,” mysterious specks of light that were only recently discovered thanks to the incredibly powerful infrared eye of this $10 billion space telescope. However, with a mass equivalent to 100 million times that of the sun, there is really nothing “little” about this black hole at all, with the discovery team dubbing it “BiRD,” which stands for Big Red Dot.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementBlack holes don’t emit any light themselves, in fact trapping any incident light due to their immense gravitational influence, but when these cosmic titans are surrounded by a wealth of matter upon which they are feeding, this material and jets blasted out from the poles of the black holes create a very conspicuous and bright object calle …
