Rosa Rubicondior: The Universe Is Nothing Like The Description of it in The Bible 1

Illustration of an accreting supermassive black hole shrouded by dust in
CAPERS-LRD-z9.

NASA/JPL-Caltech.

Artist representation of CAPERS-LRD-z9, home to the earliest confirmed black hole. The supermassive black hole at its center is believed to be surrounded by a thick cloud of gas, giving the galaxy a distinctive red color.

Image credit: Erik Zumalt, The University of Texas at Austin.

Meet the Universe’s Earliest Confirmed Black Hole: A Monster at the Dawn of Time - UT Austin News - The University of Texas at Austin

Creationists normally assume that scientists are all out to destroy their faith because they hate God and/or worship Satan, so to add to that paranoid delusion, this is the first of five blog posts about very recent discoveries in the fields of Astronomy and cosmology that illustrate the glaring contrast between the real universe and the universe described in Genesis. The Bible describes a small, flat planet fixed and immobile at the centre, covered by a solid dome, with water above and below and stars, sun and moon fixed to the dome as lamps and tiny lights that can shake lose and fall to Earth during earthquakes; the whole thing created just 6,000 - 10,000 years ago from nothing.

The first of these papers is by an international team of astronomers, led by The University of Texas at Austin’s Cosmic Frontier Center who have discovered the most distant black hole ever confirmed. It is in the galaxy CAPERS-LRD-z9 which formed 500 million years after the Big Bang. That places it 13.3 billion years into the past, when our universe was just 3% of its current age. A time line and distance completely off the Bible's scale.

CAPERS-LRD-z9 at a Glance.

Type & Nickname: A compact, bright, high‑redshift galaxy, part of a mysterious class dubbed “Little Red Dots” (LRDs) — so named because of how they appear in JWST infrared images: small, intensely red specks against deep cosmic fields [1].
Cosmic Timeframe: Its light stems from a time just 500 million years after the Big Bang — that is, approximately 13.3 billion years in the past [2].
Spectroscopic Confirmation: Spectroscopy via JWST’s NIRSpec (as part of the CAPERS survey) pinned its redshift at z = 9.288, making it the most distant galaxy known to display broad emission lines from gas orbiting a black hole [3].
Supermassive Black Hole (SMBH):

Estimated mass lies between 4.5 million and 316 million times the mass of the Sun, with a canonical estimate around 38 million \(\small \text{M}_\odot\)
That potentially represents up to 5% of the galaxy’s total stellar mass, far exceeding proportions seen in typical modern galaxies [4, 5].

Enshrouding Gas & Red Hue: The galaxy’s red appearance probably stems from a dense, dusty cloud of gas draped around the central black hole, which reddens (reddshift) the light escaping from the region [1].
Implications for Black Hole Formation: The presence of such a massive black hole so early challenges existing models. Either the black hole began as a very large seed (e.g., >10,000 \(\small \text{M}_\odot\)) that grew at the Eddington limit, or it started smaller and grew extraordinarily fast — super-Eddington accretion is required to reach this size so early [3].

CAPERS-LRD-z9 (summary)

Type: Little Red Dot (compact, red-shifted galaxy)
Redshift: z ≈ 9.288 → ~500 million years post-Big Bang (~13.3 Gyr ago)
Black Hole:

Mass estimate: ~38 million \(\small \text{M}_\odot\) (range: 4.5–316 million \(\small \text{M}_\odot\))
SMBH may constitute up to 5% of host galaxy’s stellar mass

Visual Traits: Red colour due to encircling dusty gas cloud
Significance: Challenges conventional black hole growth models—indicates either unusually massive seeds or extremely rapid early growth

The discovery is described in a University of Texas at Austin news release.

Meet the Universe’s Earliest Confirmed Black Hole: A Monster at the Dawn of Time
An international team of astronomers, led by The University of Texas at Austin’s Cosmic Frontier Center, has identified the most distant black hole ever confirmed. It and the galaxy it calls home, CAPERS-LRD-z9, are present 500 million years after the Big Bang. That places it 13.3 billion years into the past, when our universe was just 3% of its current age. As such, it provides a unique opportunity to study the structure and evolution of this enigmatic period.

When looking for black holes, this is about as far back as you can practically go. We’re really pushing the boundaries of what current technology can detect.

Dr. Anthony J. Taylor, lead author.
Department of Astronomy
The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA.

Their research was published Aug. 6 in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

While astronomers have found a few, more distant candidates, they have yet to find the distinct spectroscopic signature associated with a black hole.

Steven L. Finkelstein, co-author
Department of Astronomy
The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA.

With spectroscopy, astronomers split light into its many wavelengths to study an object’s characteristics. To identify black holes, they search for evidence of fast-moving gas. As it circles and falls into a black hole, the light from gas moving away from us is stretched into much redder wavelengths, and light from gas moving toward us is compressed into much bluer wavelengths.

There aren’t many other things that create this signature. And this galaxy has it!

Dr. Anthony J. Taylor.

The team used data from the James Webb Space Telescope’s CAPERS (CANDELS-Area Prism Epoch of Reionization Survey) program for its search. Launched in 2021, JWST provides the most far-reaching views into space available, and CAPERS provides observations of the outermost edge.

The first goal of CAPERS is to confirm and study the most distant galaxies. JWST spectroscopy is the key to confirming their distances and understanding their physical properties.

Mark Dickinson, co-author.
NSF’s National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory
Tucson, AZ, USA.

Initially seen as an interesting speck in the program’s imagery, CAPERS-LRD-z9 turned out to be part of a new class of galaxies known as “Little Red Dots.” Present only in the first 1.5 billion years of the universe, these galaxies are very compact, red, and unexpectedly bright.

The discovery of Little Red Dots was a major surprise from early JWST data, as they looked nothing like galaxies seen with the Hubble Space Telescope. Now, we’re in the process of figuring out what they’re like and how they came to be.

Steven L. Finkelstein.

CAPERS-LRD-z9 may help astronomers do just that.

For one, this galaxy adds to mounting evidence that supermassive black holes are the source of the unexpected brightness in Little Red Dots. Usually, that brightness would indicate an abundance of stars in a galaxy. However, Little Red Dots exist at a time when such a large mass of stars is unlikely.

On the other hand, black holes also shine brightly. That’s because they compress and heat the materials they’re consuming, creating tremendous light and energy. By confirming the existence of one in CAPERS-LRD-z9, astronomers have found a striking example of this connection in Little Red Dots.

The newfound galaxy may also help answer what causes the distinct red color in Little Red Dots. That may be thanks to a thick cloud of gas surrounding the black hole, skewing its light into redder wavelengths as it passes through.

We’ve seen these clouds in other galaxies. When we compared this object to those other sources, it was a dead ringer.

Dr. Anthony J. Taylor.

This galaxy is also notable for how colossal its black hole is. Estimated as up to 300 million times that of our sun, its mass measures up to half that of all the stars in its galaxy. Even among supermassive black holes, this is particularly big.

Finding such a massive black hole so early on provides astronomers a valuable opportunity to study how these objects developed. A black hole present in the later universe will have had diverse opportunities to bulk up during its lifetime. But one present in the first few hundred million years wouldn’t.

This adds to growing evidence that early black holes grew much faster than we thought possible, or they started out far more massive than our models predict.

Steven L. Finkelstein.

To continue their research on CAPERS-LRD-z9, the team hopes to gather more, higher-resolution observations using JWST. This could provide greater insight into it and the role black holes played in the development of Little Red Dots.

This is a good test object for us. We haven’t been able to study early black hole evolution until recently, and we are excited to see what we can learn from this unique object.

Dr. Anthony J. Taylor.

Additional data for research came from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) at Kitt Peak National Observatory, a program of NSF NOIRLab.

Publication:
Anthony J. Taylor et al 2025
CAPERS-LRD-z9: A Gas-enshrouded Little Red Dot Hosting a Broad-line Active Galactic Nucleus at z = 9.288
ApJL 989(1) L7 DOI 10.3847/2041-8213/ade789

Abstract
We present CAPERS-LRD-z9, a little red dot (LRD) that we confirm to be a z = 9.288 broad-line active galactic nucleus (BLAGN). First identified as a high-redshift LRD candidate from PRIMER NIRCam photometry, follow-up NIRSpec/PRISM spectroscopy of CAPERS-LRD-z9 from the CANDELS-Area Prism Epoch of Reionization Survey (CAPERS) has revealed a broad 3500 km s⁻¹ full width at half-maximum Hβ emission line and narrow [O III] λλ4959, 5007 lines, indicative of a BLAGN. Based on the broad Hβ line, we compute a canonical black hole mass of \(\small {\mathrm{log}}\,({M}_{{\rm{BH}}}/{M}_{\odot })=7.58\pm 0.15\), although full consideration of systematic uncertainties yields a conservative range of \(\small 6.65\lt {\mathrm{log}}\,({M}_{{\rm{BH}}}/{M}_{\odot })\lt 8.50\). These observations suggest that either a massive black hole seed or a lighter stellar remnant seed undergoing periods of super-Eddington accretion is necessary to grow such a massive black hole in ≲500 Myr of cosmic time. CAPERS-LRD-z9 exhibits a strong Balmer break, consistent with a central AGN surrounded by dense (∼10¹⁰ cm⁻³) neutral gas. We model CAPERS-LRD-z9 using Cloudy to fit the emission redward of the Balmer break with a dense-gas-enshrouded AGN and bagpipes to fit the rest-ultraviolet emission as a host-galaxy stellar population. This upper limit on the stellar mass of the host galaxy (\(\small \lt {10}^9\ {M}_\odot\)) implies that the black hole to stellar mass ratio may be extremely large, possibly >5% (although systematic uncertainties on the black hole mass prevent strong conclusions). However, the shape of the UV continuum differs from typical high-redshift star-forming galaxies, indicating that this UV emission may also be of AGN origin; hence, the true stellar mass of the host may be still lower.

Anthony J. Taylor et al 2025
CAPERS-LRD-z9: A Gas-enshrouded Little Red Dot Hosting a Broad-line Active Galactic Nucleus at z = 9.288
ApJL 989(1) L7 DOI 10.3847/2041-8213/ade789

Copyright: © [year] The authors.
Published by IOP Publishing. Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

The discovery of CAPERS-LRD-z9 and its monster black hole just 500 million years after the Big Bang shows a universe in the making — vast, ancient, and unimaginably dynamic. It could not be further removed from the primitive flat-Earth cosmos of Genesis, with its dome overhead and lights pinned to the sky. The real universe is not a few thousand years old, but over 13 billion, and still unfolding before our eyes. This is only the first example; in the posts to come we’ll explore further discoveries that leave biblical creation ever more exposed as mythology.

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