Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have separated the light of a quasar from the light of its surrounding stars, offering unprecedented insight into how the universe’s oldest black holes grew.
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This bit from the article – Direct-collapse
According to the standard pathway for black hole formation, these black holes simply shouldn’t have had enough time to get as big as they are, raising the possibility of alternative formation methods.
One proposed mechanism is “direct collapse.” In this model, instead of a star collapsing to generate a black hole, a giant cloud of dust and gas collapses, bypassing the star stage completely. In theory, this could generate much larger black holes — known as direct-collapse black holes — giving them an evolutionary head start to become supermassive earlier than conventionally possible. Although it’s still a theory, in 2023 astronomers announced the first candidate for a galaxy containing a direct-collapse black hole.