Three Active Black Holes Found in a Distant Early Galaxy
A galaxy from the universe’s early era contains not one but three actively feeding black holes, according to astronomers. The system is located more than 12.5 billion light-years away, making it a rare opportunity to study how supermassive black holes developed when the cosmos was young.
Two of the black holes are separated by only 620 light-years and are expected eventually to merge. The third lies farther from the pair. One of the black holes has a mass of about 80 million Suns, while another is accreting material faster than conventional theories predict.
The discovery provides additional evidence that massive black holes could grow rapidly in the early universe and that multiple black holes could coexist within a single galaxy.