Scientists have discovered three supermassive black holes in a distant galaxy called J0148-4214. This galaxy is so far away that the light we see from it traveled for 12.5 billion years to reach us. This means we are looking at the galaxy as it was just 1.2 billion years after the universe began. This is the first time astronomers have found three active black holes together in such an ancient galaxy.
The discovery helps us understand the early universe. In the past, galaxies often collided. These collisions likely brought multiple black holes close together. Two of the black holes are near the center of J0148-4214, only about 620 light-years apart. The third black hole is further out, about 5,500 light-years from the center.
All three black holes are consuming gas. The smaller central black hole is eating gas faster than scientists thought possible. The larger central black hole is about 80 million times the mass of our sun, while the smaller one is about 600,000 solar masses. The outer black hole has a mass of about two million suns.
This discovery was made using the James Webb Space Telescope. Its instruments allowed scientists to see the gas moving around the black holes. The telescope's advanced technology helped them distinguish the three objects, even though the two central ones appear as a single point of light. This finding suggests that black holes may have grown very large very quickly in the early universe by merging with each other.