The Webb Space Telescope team
continues to work on commissioning the science instruments, the final step before starting science operations in the summer
One of the most exciting
areas of discovery that Webb is about to open is the search for primeval black holes in the early universe.
Most (probably all) galaxies
host black holes at their centers, with masses ranging from millions to billions of times the mass of our Sun.
Black hole with masses
of several billion solar masses, already in place when the universe was only about 700 million years old a small fraction of its current age of 13.8 billion years.
This is a puzzling result,
as at such early epochs there is not enough time to grow such hyper-massive black holes, according to standard theories.
One possibility is that
black holes, resulting from the death of the very first generation of stars in the early universe, have accreted material at exceptionally high rates.