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Research

Three Supermassive Black Holes Found in Single Galaxy for First Time

JWST astronomers found three supermassive black holes in one galaxy, a first for the early universe.

AI News Feed · 2026-08-15 05:59

Two of the black holes sit just 620 light-years apart near the galaxy's center and are expected to merge within a few hundred million years. Theories of galaxy evolution suggest that, early in the history of the universe, galaxies came very close to one another and merged; black holes at their centers also merged, giving rise to even more massive black holes.

The analysis yields black hole masses of approximately 80 million, 0.6 million and 2 million solar masses. The most massive black hole is accreting at a lower rate than the nearby black hole with a mass of 0.6 million solar masses, which is actively feeding and even exceeding the maximum accretion rate predicted by basic theories of black hole growth, the Eddington limit.

"The JWST data allowed us not only to identify the three black holes, but also to estimate their masses, accretion rates and the stellar mass of the galaxy," said Dr. Giovanni Mazzolari, second author of the study and researcher at MPE. "We find a total stellar mass of about 1.3 billion solar masses, and the black holes represent a significant fraction of that."

The central black hole pair is expected to merge within the next few hundred million years. "These results are extremely exciting," added Roberto Maiolino, professor at the University of Cambridge and co-author of the study. "They suggest that black hole merging may be an additional, fast route for their rapid growth in the early universe."

The third black hole, located off-nucleus, may be the remnant of a previous merger, be displaced from the center by a gravitational recoil kick, or be currently migrating inward. The findings have been published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.