JWST rewrites how the first supermassive black holes formed in the early universe

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is uncovering enormous black holes in the early universe that don’t fit traditional growth models, including a 40-million-solar-mass black hole in the galaxy UHZ1 when the cosmos was only ~470 million years old. JWST also reveals compact “little red dots” that may be black holes with no visible host galaxies, pointing to multiple formation channels—direct-collapse scenarios and possibly primordial black holes—leading many researchers to favor a blended origin for supermassive black holes. Future missions like Euclid and the Roman Space Telescope will help distinguish which pathways are most common.