A small and vigorous black hole in the early Universe
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Several theories have been proposed to describe the formation of black hole seeds in the early Universe and to explain the emergence of very massive black holes observed in the first thousand million years after the Big Bang 1–3 . Models consider different seeding and accretion scenarios 4–7 , which require the detection and characterization of black holes in the first few hundred million years after the Big Bang to be validated. Here we present an extensive analysis of the JWST-NIRSpec spectrum of GN-z11, an exceptionally luminous galaxy at z = 10.6, revealing the detection of the [Ne iv ] λ 2423 and CII* λ 1335 transitions (typical of active galactic nuclei), as well as semi-forbidden nebular lines tracing gas densities higher than 10 9 cm −3 , typical of the broad line region of active galactic nuclei. These spectral features indicate that GN-z11 hosts an accreting black hole. The spectrum also reveals a deep and blueshifted CIV λ 1549 absorption trough, tracing an outflow with velocity 800−1,000 km s −1 , probably driven by the active galactic nucleus. Assuming local virial relations, we derive a black hole mass of $$\log ({M}_{{\rm{BH}}}/{M}_{\odot })=6.2\pm 0.3$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>log</mml:mi> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>(</mml:mo> <mml:mrow> <mml:msub> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>M</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>BH</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> </mml:msub> <mml:mo>/</mml:mo> <mml:msub> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>M</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>⊙</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> </mml:msub> </mml:mrow> <mml:mo>)</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> <mml:mo>=</mml:mo> <mml:mn>6.2</mml:mn> <mml:mo>±</mml:mo> <mml:mn>0.3</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> , accreting at about five times the Eddington rate. These properties are consistent with both heavy seeds scenarios and scenarios considering intermediate and light seeds experiencing episodic super-Eddington phases. Our finding explains the high luminosity of GN-z11 and can also provide an explanation for its exceptionally high nitrogen abundance.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".