Astronomers find 3 supermassive black holes in early galaxy J0148-4214
Astronomers just found three supermassive black holes packed into a single galaxy, J0148-4214, whose light has taken 12.5 billion years to reach us.
What's wild is that this galaxy existed less than 1.3 billion years after the Big Bang, so these black holes formed really early.
Lead researcher Hannah Ubler called it "This is the first evidence of three active black holes in a single galaxy in the distant universe," which helps explain how these cosmic giants grew so fast.
Black holes reach 80 million suns
The black holes are massive: one is about 80 million times heavier than our sun, another is 600,000 times, and the third weighs in at two million suns.
Two are close together (just 620 light-years apart), while the third is a bit farther out.
Scientists used the James Webb Space Telescope to spot them by tracking fast-moving hydrogen gas swirling around each one.
This discovery shows that galaxy mergers may have helped supermassive black holes grow quickly, and future tools like ESA's LISA could even catch gravitational waves from events like this.