Discovery by astronomers with the James Webb Space Telescope: The pair of supermassive black holes LID-1166, located 4,900 light-years apart in a galaxy in fusion.

Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have discovered a pair of supermassive black holes, named LID-1166, located about 4,900 light-years apart in a galaxy that is in the process of merging.

This observation takes place during a time when the Universe was about 1.3 billion years old, providing researchers with a rare opportunity to study the growth of supermassive black holes in the early stages of the cosmos. Systems with two black holes are relatively common in the early Universe, but their observation is complicated by the gas and dust surrounding them. Using the NIRSpec instrument on JWST, researchers were able to distinguish the two sources, confirming that both black holes are active and accumulating matter.

The discovery could provide clues about how supermassive black holes rapidly grew after the Big Bang, suggesting that galactic mergers may accelerate this process by drawing gas toward the galactic centers. Studying these systems, like LID-1166, can help in understanding the evolution of galaxies and their black holes in the early Universe.