Infinity Galaxy Discovery: Astronomers Witness Birth of a Supermassive Black Hole

Astronomers have discovered a rare and stunning cosmic formation nicknamed the Infinity Galaxy, which may be giving birth to a supermassive black hole for the first time ever observed.

Using data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaiʻi, scientists identified the galaxy’s unique figure-eight shape — a result of two colliding disk galaxies. What makes it even more surprising is the black hole’s unusual position: right in the middle of the figure-eight, not at either galaxy’s center.

The newly found black hole is estimated to be one million times the mass of our Sun and is still in its early growth phase, pulling in surrounding gas at incredible speed.

“This is unlike anything we’ve seen before,” said lead researcher Pieter van Dokkum of Yale University. “The location and formation process challenge existing theories about how supermassive black holes are born.”

The galaxy was first spotted in JWST’s COSMOS-Web survey, and later studied using radio, X-ray, and spectroscopic data from various observatories, including the Very Large Array (VLA) and Chandra X-ray Observatory. These observations confirmed the black hole’s presence and its rare location between the two merging galaxies.

Researchers believe that the collision between the galaxies compressed huge clouds of gas, causing them to collapse directly into a black hole rather than forming stars. While such events are rare today, they may have been common in the early universe.

Further studies with Keck’s adaptive optics and advanced computer simulations are planned to understand if these extreme collisions could naturally create black holes. If proven, the Infinity Galaxy could offer a real-time glimpse into how the earliest galactic giants — including the Milky Way — were formed.