Astronomers find galaxy with three supermassive black holes in early universe
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Astronomers find a galaxy in the early universe hosting three supermassive black holes, with two close enough to be on the verge of colliding. The James Webb Space Telescope detected hydrogen gas moving at thousands of kilometers per second around them, a study in Astronomy & Astrophysics reports.
Key Facts
- Light from the galaxy left it only one billion years after the Big Bang.
- The three black holes range in mass from 600,000 to 80 million solar masses.
- Two of the black holes are being pulled toward each other and are on the verge of a cosmic merger; the third may join later or may have been ejected from the system.
- The discovery was made with the James Webb Space Telescope's near-infrared spectrograph, which detected hydrogen gas moving at thousands of kilometers per second.
The Triple Black Hole System
The galaxy hosts three active supermassive black holes, not the two the researchers had initially hoped to find. Light from the system left the galaxy only one billion years after the Big Bang. The two closest black holes are being pulled toward each other and are on the verge of a cosmic collision and merger. The smallest black hole has a mass of 600,000 suns, while the largest reaches 80 million solar masses. A third black hole could join the merger or may have been ejected from the system by a past collision.
James Webb's Role
The James Webb Space Telescope's near-infrared spectrograph separated light into different wavelengths to detect hydrogen gas moving at thousands of kilometers per second. Steven Finkelstein of the University of Texas said the Hubble Space Telescope would have seen the galaxy as a blurry spot of only a few pixels. Finkelstein added that the only force capable of moving gas so violently is the gravity of a growing supermassive black hole. The discovery was published in Astronomy & Astrophysics.
Impact on Black Hole Models
Researchers led by Hannah Ubler of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics said such distant triple systems had never been observed before. The light left the galaxy when the universe was about one billion years old, an era when black holes were not expected to have grown so massive. Giovanni Mazzolari of the Max Planck Institute said theories about how these giant objects formed so quickly are being reshaped. Ubler noted that scientists previously only assumed supermassive black holes began growing in the early universe, but now they are watching the process live.
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Astronomers find galaxy with three supermassive black holes in early universe
