An article published in “The Astrophysical Journal Letters” reports the results of a census of the youngest supermassive black holes that existed in the early universe. A team of researchers used observations conducted with the Hubble Space Telescope that started from the so-called Hubble Ultra Deep Field to search for primordial supermassive black holes with the addition of data recently collected using the James Webb Space Telescope. The conclusion is that these objects are more numerous than expected, a confirmation that they formed very quickly. This new study will help to understand how.

An article published in “The Astrophysical Journal Letters” reports the results of the study of three very compact primordial galaxies with characteristics that can’t be explained by current cosmological models. A team led by researchers from Penn State University used observations conducted with the James Webb Space Telescope within the RUBIES survey to examine three objects that were considered mysterious for their strange characteristics.

In an article published in the journal “Nature” the researchers had already proposed that those were galaxies, and the new examination of the data confirms that. We see them as they were when the universe was between 600 and 800 million years old but their emissions indicate that they contain stars that are already relatively old and supermassive black holes with masses that were already enormous, perhaps more than the one at the center of the Milky Way.