NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has uncovered an unusual object nicknamed the Infinity Galaxy, which exhibits a unique shape with two compact nuclei surrounded by a ring. The team behind the discovery believes this galaxy was formed by the collision of two disk galaxies and now hosts an active supermassive black hole at its center.
The anomaly lies in the black hole’s location within the vast expanse of gas between the two nuclei, rather than being situated at the nucleus itself. This finding has significant implications for our understanding of how massive black holes form.
Researchers propose that the black hole may have formed through a “direct collapse” process, where a dense gas cloud collapses into a black hole without first forming a star. The direct-collapse theory may provide an explanation for the incredibly massive black holes discovered by Webb at early stages in the universe.
The discovery was made possible by analyzing data from the COSMOS-Web survey and follow-up observations conducted using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and Very Large Array radio telescope.
Further investigation is needed to confirm the direct collapse hypothesis, but initial results show that the black hole’s velocity matches closely with that of surrounding gas, supporting the theory. The Infinity Galaxy also harbors two other active supermassive black holes in its nuclei, further solidifying the finding.
Source: https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/webb/2025/07/15/nasas-webb-finds-possible-direct-collapse-black-hole