JWST finds three actively feeding black holes in an ancient galaxy
An international team led by the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics has identified three actively feeding supermassive black holes in galaxy J0148-4214, seen as it was 1.2 billion years after the Big Bang. The researchers say the two black holes near the galaxy’s centre are expected to merge within a few hundred million years.
Bottom line — The two central black holes are expected to merge within a few hundred million years.
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The galaxy is more than 12.5 billion light-years away and has a measured redshift of 5.02.
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The two central black holes are about 620 light-years apart; the third is roughly 5,500 light-years from the centre.
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Researchers estimate their masses at 80 million, 600,000 and 2 million times the Sun’s mass.
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The 600,000-solar-mass black hole is feeding faster than the basic Eddington limit predicts, according to the researchers.
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The team used JWST’s NIRSpec integral field spectroscopy and spectro-astrometry to distinguish the black holes’ signals.
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The researchers say the outer black hole may have been pushed out by gravitational recoil after an earlier merger, or may be moving towards the centre.