Image courtesy of Hannah Übler
Joel
Kontinen
This study
throws a shadow on the big bang as massive black holes could not rise so soon
after the big bang,
“This
system is in the very, very early universe,” says Dougal Dobie at the
University of Sydney, who wasn’t involved in the discovery. “So, how have we
ended up in a situation where these three supermassive black holes have formed
and come close together in only a billion years or so since the big bang?”
An analysis
revealed two separate regions of high-velocity hydrogen gas in the centre of
the galaxy, indicating two so-called accreting black holes that were separated
by about 620 light years – a hop, skip and a jump in cosmic terms.
An
accreting black hole is a super dense area of space, so compressed that light can’t escape, but
that continuously drags in surrounding gas, dust and even stars. Our own
galaxy, the Milky Way, has just one massive black hole at the core of its
spiral arms.
Source:
James Woodford 2026 Three black holes discovered in a young galaxy for the first time | New Scientist12 August
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