James Webb Space Telescope observations provide evidence of three actively feeding black holes in the early galaxy J0148-4214, according to a study led by Hannah Übler at Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics. ScienceDaily highlighted the findings on October 25. The research itself appeared in Astronomy & Astrophysics on August 12, rather than being announced for the first time today.
The team used Webb’s NIRSpec instrument to map hydrogen emission across the galaxy. Its redshift of about five places it in the early universe. Two sources lie near the centre, about 620 light-years apart in projection, while the third lies roughly 5,500 light-years from the centre. These are separations on the sky, rather than complete measurements of their three-dimensional distances.
The evidence comes from broad hydrogen emission lines associated with rapidly moving gas. The authors considered supernovae, shocks, winds and massive stars, but judged gas around accreting black holes the most likely explanation. Mapping changes in the light’s position across the spectrum helped distinguish the central sources despite their close spacing.
The study estimates masses of about 80 million, 600,000 and two million Suns for the three objects. These estimates rely on methods calibrated with nearby systems and carry substantial uncertainties when applied to distant galaxies. The results therefore support a possible black-hole triplet, while leaving room for refinement of its physical properties.
The researchers suggest that the central pair could eventually merge, illustrating a possible route to rapid black-hole growth. A simplified calculation gives an inward-spiralling timescale of roughly 700 million years or less, not an observed collision. The outer object may be moving inward or may have been displaced by earlier interactions. Future gravitational-wave observatories such as LISA could test mergers in descendants of systems like this one.
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