Scientists have discovered a distant galaxy that harbors not one, but three supermassive black holes at its core.
For a long time, experts believed that most galaxies contained only a single supermassive black hole, with masses ranging from millions to billions of times that of the Sun.
However, galaxies grow and evolve through merger activities, and as a result, some of these galaxies can simultaneously host multiple supermassive black holes.
Location of the black holes in a galaxy 4.2 billion light-years from Earth – (Image: UCT/NASA Goddard)
This was confirmed when experts observed a galaxy named SDSS J150243.09+111557.3, located 4.2 billion light-years away from Earth, according to astronomer Roger Deane from the University of Cape Town (South Africa).
To study this galaxy, they synthesized signals from large radio antennas spaced up to 10,000 kilometers apart, allowing researchers to capture images with a clarity 50 times greater than that of the Hubble Space Telescope.
“All three supermassive black holes have masses approximately 100 million times that of the sun,” stated expert Deane.
This new discovery indicates that the crowded community of gigantic black holes is a more common reality than previously thought, potentially unveiling new methods for identifying them.
Previously, astronomers had found four systems containing three black holes, with the closest of these systems being 7,825 light-years away.
In this new finding, the pair of black holes are only 455 light-years apart, according to a report in the journal Nature.
