Astronomers have just confirmed the most distant black hole ever found—so far away in both time and space that it offers a glimpse into the very beginnings of the universe.
Located in a tiny galaxy called CAPERS-LRD-z9, this black hole existed just 500 million years after the Big Bang, which means the light we see from it began its journey 13.3 billion years ago. That places it in a time when the universe was only 3% of its current age.
The discovery was made by an international team of researchers led by scientists at The University of Texas at Austin’s Cosmic Frontier Center, and the results were recently published in The Astrophysical Journal.
“When it comes to finding black holes, this is about as far back in time as our current technology allows,” said Anthony Taylor, a postdoctoral researcher and the study’s lead author.
“We’re really at the edge of what’s possible.”
While a few possible candidates for older black holes have been spotted before, this is the first one with definitive proof.
That proof comes from a method called spectroscopy, where astronomers split the light from distant objects into its different wavelengths, much like a prism creates a rainbow.
In this case, the scientists found clear signs of gas spinning rapidly around a black hole—some moving toward us and some moving away.
This motion stretches the light into blue and red wavelengths, creating a signature that’s hard to confuse with anything else.
That unmistakable signature was found in CAPERS-LRD-z9, a galaxy first spotted by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The discovery was made as part of JWST’s CAPERS program, which aims to confirm and study the most distant galaxies ever observed.
At first, this galaxy appeared as just a small red dot in JWST images. But it turned out to be part of a surprising new class of objects astronomers are calling “Little Red Dots.” These galaxies are extremely compact, red in color, and brighter than expected for such an early time in the universe’s history.
One mystery about Little Red Dots is why they shine so brightly. Early galaxies shouldn’t have had time to form so many stars. But black holes—especially supermassive ones—can also shine brightly as they devour gas and dust, heating it up and releasing energy.
The newly discovered black hole in CAPERS-LRD-z9 strongly supports the idea that black holes are the source of this brightness.
Its red color may also be caused by a thick cloud of gas surrounding the black hole, which filters and reddens the light as it escapes—similar to how the setting sun looks red through Earth’s atmosphere.
What makes this discovery even more surprising is the size of the black hole. It’s estimated to be as much as 300 million times more massive than our sun—about half the mass of all the stars in its host galaxy. That’s an enormous size for a black hole that existed so early in the universe.
Finding such a massive black hole so soon after the Big Bang raises new questions about how quickly black holes can grow—or whether some may have started out much bigger than we previously thought.
The team now hopes to collect even more detailed observations using JWST to better understand this ancient galaxy and what it can teach us about how black holes and galaxies formed at the dawn of time.
“This is a rare and exciting opportunity,” said Taylor. “We’re just beginning to explore this era of the universe, and discoveries like this are helping us rewrite the story of how everything came to be.”
