Astrophysicists don’t know if direct-collapse black holes are real. They were hypothesized to explain how the Universe could contain supermassive black holes (SMBH) so early. They don’t require a stellar progenitor, nor do they require hierarchical merging. Instead, they collapse due to instability in a gas cloud, much like stars do. Recently, astronomers working with images from the COSMOS-Web survey, …
Read More »The JWST Might Have Found the First Direct-Collapse Black Hole
