Astronomers may have captured a first-of-its-kind view of a supermassive black hole being born—an extraordinary event unfolding within a newly discovered celestial object dubbed the Infinity Galaxy.
The Infinity Galaxy, recently identified in the James Webb Space Telescope’s COSMOS-Web survey, was discovered by researchers from Yale University and the University of Copenhagen while reviewing archival mission data.
Named for its unusual shape, the Infinity Galaxy features two red nuclei, each situated within a ring, resulting in an appearance reminiscent of the infinity symbol, likely formed from the merger of two disk galaxies. Further observations have added new details, identifying a supermassive black hole within a gaseous region between the nuclei, as detailed in a new scientific paper.
The Infinity Galaxy
Imagery shows a wide expanse of ionized gas, with green splotches highlighting areas of hydrogen stripped of electrons. The central black hole, estimated to be one million times the mass of our Sun, most likely formed through the collapse of a gas cloud—a process known as “direct collapse.”
“Everything is unusual about this galaxy. Not only does it look very strange, but it also has this supermassive black hole that’s pulling a lot of material in,” said lead author Pieter van Dokkum of Yale. “The biggest surprise of all was that the black hole was not located inside either of the two nuclei but in the middle. We asked ourselves: How can we make sense of this?”
“Finding a black hole that’s not in the nucleus of a massive galaxy is in itself unusual, but what’s even more unusual is the story of how it may have gotten there,” van Dokkum added. “It likely didn’t just arrive there, but instead it formed there. And pretty recently. In other words, we think we’re witnessing the birth of a supermassive black hole – something that has never been seen before.”
Supermassive Black Hole Formation
The origin of supermassive black holes has long puzzled scientists. Two main hypotheses dominate the field. The first, known as the “light seed” theory, suggests that many small black holes form through the collapse of stars and gradually merge into a supermassive black hole. However, this theory struggles to explain how some black holes appear so early in the universe’s history—suggesting that they didn’t have enough time to form through successive mergers.
The alternative is the “heavy seed” theory, which posits that supermassive black holes can form directly, as massive gas clouds collapse under their own gravity, producing black holes of around a million solar masses.
Data from the Infinity Galaxy offers a potential real-world example of the heavy seed model. First, two galaxies collide, producing the unique structure of the Infinity Galaxy. The impact shocks and compresses gas within the system. That compression could then cause a dense knot of gas to collapse, giving birth to a supermassive black hole.
“There is quite a bit of circumstantial evidence for this,” van Dokkum explained. “We observe a large swath of ionized gas, specifically hydrogen that has been stripped of its electrons, that’s right in the middle between the two nuclei, surrounding the supermassive black hole. We also know that the black hole is actively growing – we see evidence of that in X-rays from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and radio from the Very Large Array. Nevertheless, the question is, did it form there?”’
Alternative Theories
The team also considered two other possible explanations. One involves a black hole being ejected from its home galaxy and eventually joining the Infinity Galaxy as a runaway object. The other posits that the black hole may belong to a third, faint dwarf galaxy occupying the same area of the sky. However, dwarf galaxies typically lack black holes, making this explanation less likely.
“If the black hole were a runaway, or if it were in an unrelated galaxy, we would expect it to have a very different velocity from the gas in the Infinity Galaxy,” van Dokkum said. “We realized that this would be our test – measure the velocity of the gas and the velocity of the black hole, and compare them. If the velocities are close, within maybe 30 miles per second (50 kilometers per second), then it becomes hard to argue that the black hole is not formed out of that gas.”
Continuing to Study the Infinity Galaxy
To further investigate, the team was granted director’s discretionary time on the James Webb Space Telescope to observe the Infinity Galaxy in greater detail. Three early findings are especially intriguing: the extended distribution of ionized gas between the nuclei, the centered location of the black hole, and the presence of supermassive black holes within both nuclei—making a total of three.
This rare triple black hole configuration was described by van Dokkum as an “unexpected bonus.”
“We can’t say definitively that we have found a direct collapse black hole,” van Dokkum concluded. “But we can say that these new data strengthen the case that we’re seeing a newborn black hole, while eliminating some of the competing explanations.
“We will continue to pore through the data and investigate these possibilities,” van Dokkum added.
The paper, “The ∞ Galaxy: A Candidate Direct-collapse Supermassive Black Hole between Two Massive, Ringed Nuclei,” appeared on July 15, 2025, in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org, and follow him on Twitter @mdntwvlf.