Stars, Cells, and God | News of the Day | Do Early Supermassive Black Holes Refute the Big Bang?

Reasons to Believe Podcast

Join Hugh Ross in this breaking News of the Day episode of Stars, Cells, and God. Hugh describes the discovery of four fully-formed supermassive black holes that existed just 410–760 million years after the cosmic creation event.

Do Early Supermassive Black Holes Refute the Big Bang?

• Quasar J1120+0641, seen 760 million years after the cosmic beginning, has a supermassive black hole (SMBH) weighing 1.52 billion solar masses.
• Quasar J1342+0928, seen 700 million years after the beginning, has a SMBH weighing 0.78 billion solar masses.
• Quasar J0313-1806, seen 690 million years after the beginning, has a SMBH of 1.6 billion solar masses.
• The most distantly detected SMBH belongs to GN-z11. Just 410 million after the beginning, its SMBH weighs 0.002 billion solar masses.
• There are three ways such SMBHs can form so early in a big bang universe: through 1) very aggressive early gas accretion by the BHs; 2) mergers of the BHs arising from many 500+ solar-mass first generation stars; and 3) mergers of 10,000+ solar-mass gas clouds that collapse into black holes without forming stars.
• The discovery of many more cosmic dawn SMBHs will determine which one, of more, of the three ways explains the SMBHs.

Links & Resources

• A Mature Quasar at Cosmic Dawn Revealed by JWST Rest-Frame Infrared Spectroscopy
• Black Holes as Evidence of God’s Care