Which formed first, galaxies or black holes? That question has long plagued scientists who had no way of collecting the data needed to solve it. That is until now. Recent James Webb Space Telescope observations point to new theories for how things started int he early days after the Big Bang.
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00 [MUSIC]
00:04 Which formed first, galaxies or black holes?
00:07 That question has long plagued scientists who had no way of collecting the data needed to solve it.
00:11 That is until now.
00:13 The James Webb Space Telescope allows astronomers to look at light that was created in the relative moments after the Big Bang.
00:18 This has let them observe both the earliest galaxies forming as well as the earliest signs of black holes.
00:23 Now experts say it's likely that both galaxies and black holes coalesced at the same time.
00:29 Astronomer Joseph Silk likens these primordial black holes to the building blocks or seeds for early galaxies,
00:35 saying that this new discovery changes everything, telling Johns Hopkins University Press,
00:40 "They really boosted everything, like gigantic amplifiers of star formation,
00:44 which is a whole turnaround of what we thought possible before.
00:47 So much so that this could completely shake up our understanding of how galaxies form,"
00:52 with Silk adding that black hole outflow may have squashed gas clouds, compressing them into stars.
00:57 This new find also provides more support for a newer theory on black hole formation,
01:02 suggesting the giant clouds of uncollected matter may also collapse into supermassive black holes
01:07 rather than requiring a star or stellar collision for one to occur.
01:12 [ Music ]