A Radiant Colossus in the Universe's Infancy
Light from the galaxy PAN-z14-1 began its journey when the universe was 400 million years old — a cosmic infancy. The expansion of space made it travel to us for nearly 13.5 billion years.
Quasi-stars: The Furnaces Where Supermassive Black Holes Are Born
Heir to the ideas of Edwin Hubble, the James Webb Space Telescope has peered back to an era when the expansion of the universe was still picking up speed. At redshifts z>4, it spotted bizarre objects—"Little Red Dots" (LRDs).
Cosmic Cocoons: MEOW's Infrared Hunt Reveals the Secret Growth of Black Holes
The Universe is less than a billion years old, yet at its centers already sit black holes with masses of a billion suns. According to the conventional picture, they grew by voraciously devouring matter, but calculations show that 'feeding' must have been almost continuous, while visible quasar flares last only a few million years. So where does all the accreting fuel go?