Universe delivers a banger as scientists find galaxy with 3 supermassive black holes

In one of the most shocking discoveries in the universe, scientists have found a galaxy with not one, not two, but three supermassive black holes. Typically, they are believed to exist at the centre of their home galaxy. Earlier this year, astronomers from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy announced that they had found a galaxy with a pair of supermassive black holes. That itself was a huge finding, and was the first time a pair had been seen in one galaxy. Now astronomers from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics have stumbled upon a galaxy with three supermassive black holes.

Hannah Übler, lead author of the study, said, "This is the first evidence of three active black holes in a single galaxy in the distant universe." The findings were published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics on August 12, 2026.

Two of them will collide, the third is located on the fringes of the galaxy

Two of these supermassive black holes are located at the heart of the galaxy, while the third one is sitting on the outskirts. The biggest one of them is equivalent to 80 million Suns and is one of the two at the centre. The second one near it is only 620 light-years away from it and has a solar mass of just 600,000. The third supermassive black hole is about 5,500 light-years from the centre and two million times the mass of our Sun. Surprisingly, the smallest is the hungriest of the three and on a merger course with the biggest one, which will happen in the next few hundred million years.

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The galaxy is J0148-4214 and 12.5 billion light-years from us. This means what scientists on Earth are seeing existed only about 1.2 billion years after the Big Bang. What else is surprising is that none of them is quiet, and all three are accreting and consuming material. Almost every other black hole sitting at the centre of any galaxy, including the Milky Way, is relatively quiet.

JWST helped identify three separate black holes

The discovery was made by using the James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRSpec instrument, which examined the galaxy’s spectral signature. It broke down the wavelengths of light, which allowed them to see hydrogen moving at high speed. In the absence of this tool, they would have spotted only one black hole. "The JWST data allowed us not only to identify the three black holes, but also to estimate their masses, accretion rates, and the stellar mass of the galaxy," Co-author Giovanni Mazzolari said.

The researchers say these older black holes can reveal how the universe grew. Hannah added, the finding shows that the early universe was capable of bringing massive black holes together and creating a scenario where they could merge, a process scientists have long believed is how supermassive black holes form.