Astronomers find three actively feeding black holes in one distant galaxy

Astronomers have found three supermassive black holes actively feeding in a single distant galaxy, according to researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics. The galaxy, called J0148-4214, is so far away that its light took about 12.5 billion years to reach Earth, showing it as it was roughly 1.2 billion years after the Big Bang.

What the team found

The discovery, reported on October 26, 2026, is described by the research team as the first evidence of three active black holes in one galaxy in the distant universe. All three are drawing in gas and other material from surrounding disks, which makes them detectable through the light they produce.

According to lead author Hannah Ubler, who heads a research group at MPE, two of the black holes sit close to the galaxy’s center and are separated by about 620 light-years. The third lies much farther out, around 5,500 light-years from the center.

• Galaxy: J0148-4214
• Distance from Earth: about 12.5 billion light-years
• Time observed: about 1.2 billion years after the Big Bang
• Redshift: z = 5.02
• Black hole masses: about 80 million, 6 million, and 2 million Suns

How the black holes were identified

The researchers did not see the black holes directly. Instead, they studied patterns in light from hydrogen gas near the galaxy’s center. The intense gravity around a black hole can accelerate nearby gas, leaving distinctive marks in the spectrum of light.

Using a technique called spectro-astrometry, the team separated signals that might otherwise have been treated as one source. They also used data from the James Webb Space Telescope, according to co-author Dr. Giovanni Mazzolari, to identify the three black holes and estimate their masses, feeding rates, and the galaxy’s stellar mass.

The galaxy itself has a stellar mass of about 1.3 billion Suns, according to the researchers.

Why the discovery matters

The finding adds to evidence about how supermassive black holes may have grown in the early universe. According to the researchers, galaxy mergers and collisions were common at that time, and those events could bring black holes together until they merge as well.

Ubler said the result supports the idea that early-universe processes were effective at gathering supermassive black holes into the same system. That could help explain how some black holes grew so quickly and may point to future mergers that gravitational-wave observatories could one day detect.

Roberto Maiolino, a professor at Cambridge University and co-author of the study, said this may show that black hole mergers are an additional and faster route to rapid growth in the early universe.

What happens next

According to the researchers, the two black holes near the center of J0148-4214 are expected to merge within the next few tens of millions of years. That collision would create an even larger black hole.

The third black hole may be a leftover from an earlier merger that was pushed outward by a strong gravitational kick, or it may still be moving toward the center and could eventually interact with the other two.

The team says the result also shows the power of the James Webb Space Telescope for studying distant galaxies. It may mean that other faraway galaxies contain multiple active black holes that have not yet been recognized.

Source: Ratopati