The James Webb Space Telescope has detected the most distant dormant black hole in the known universe, hiding in a galaxy more than 10 billion light-years from Earth. An international research team led by Andrew Newman of Carnegie Science in California made this groundbreaking discovery using a cosmic magnifying glass to peer into the early universe. The newly analyzed black hole, located in a galaxy called MRG-M0138, smashes the previous distance record for such an object by 15 times, according to a study published Thursday (June 4) in the journal Science.

The black hole weighs roughly six billion times the mass of the sun. This makes it one of the most massive objects detected from the early universe. Its light has traveled so far that astronomers observe the galaxy as it existed when the universe was only about 3 billion years old. This is almost a quarter of its current age of 13.8 billion years.

The previous record for the most distant dormant black hole detected using this method was a galaxy about 700 million light-years away. This new discovery sits 15 times farther, pushing the boundaries of what astronomers can observe in the early universe. Studying black holes like this one will give researchers an unprecedented look at how these cosmic giants evolved when the universe was young.

Invisible Giant Presents Detection Challenge

Finding a dormant black hole presents enormous challenges for astronomers. When a black hole actively feeds, gas falling into it releases enormous amounts of energy. This process creates a quasar-one of the brightest objects in the known universe. A dormant black hole with nothing falling into it remains effectively invisible in all wavelengths, making detection extraordinarily difficult.

To find and weigh this one, the team tracked the movement of stars orbiting near the galaxy’s center. Stars close to a massive black hole move faster than those farther away, and by measuring those differences the researchers calculated its mass. It is the same technique used to detect the black hole at the center of our own Milky Way galaxy, but it has never before been applied to a galaxy this far away.

“We were able to detect this black hole at a distance of 10 billion light years by combining [James Webb Space Telescope]’s sharp vision with a natural magnifying glass,” Newman said in a statement.

Gravitational Lensing Acts as Natural Telescope

That magnifying glass is a phenomenon called gravitational lensing. A large cluster of galaxies sits between MRG-M0138 and Earth, and its gravity bends and magnifies the light coming from behind it. The effect essentially acts as a natural telescope, giving researchers enough detail to track star movements near the black hole’s core.

“By combining JWST data with gravitational lensing, we could peer inside the black hole’s sphere of influence, where its gravity boosts the speeds of stars,” Newman said in a released statement.

Making this measurement wasn’t easy because MRG-M0138‘s black hole emits no light of its own. The team relied entirely on observing how the black hole’s gravity influenced nearby stars. This technique provides direct mass measurements rather than indirect estimates based on assumptions about the object’s brightness or surrounding gas.

Ancient Galaxy Reveals Star Formation Mystery

Within MRG-M0138, scientists suspect there used to be a quasar-an extremely bright and supermassive black hole-that grew very quickly. This rapidly expanding black hole eventually threw out a significant amount of gas in the galaxy needed to form new stars. This process rapidly shut down star formation in the galaxy, robbing the black hole of its fuel source and likely explaining why the area looks so quiet today.

Scientists remain curious about how quickly star formation ceases in ancient galaxies such as this one. Luckily, MRG-M0138 is just part of a larger dataset of early-universe galaxies gathered from James Webb Space Telescope observations. The research team also examined four other distant, gravitationally lensed galaxies with the telescope this last year, and analysis is ongoing.

“While the stars in MRG-M0138 are ancient, star formation shut down much later in the other galaxies that we’ve just observed with JWST,” lead author Andrew Newman, a staff scientist at Carnegie Science in California, told Live Science in an email.

Searching for Evidence of Galactic Outflows

“They’re like cinders that we can study to learn what put out the fire,” Newman continued, then alluded to a direction of future research. “In particular, we’re looking for signs of gas that’s been blown out of the galaxy, by a black hole more active than the one in MRG-M0138.”

This discovery challenges existing assumptions about how supermassive black holes formed and grew in the early universe. For years, scientists assumed black holes formed inside existing galaxies when large stars collapsed, then grew by swallowing material and merging with other black holes. Webb’s measurements point to a different possibility for at least some objects in the early universe-they may have been born already massive, without a stellar collapse phase and without a much larger host galaxy feeding them.

Direct Measurements Replace Indirect Assumptions

The study confirms that all earlier mass estimates in the distant universe were indirect. These estimates were tied to assumptions from the local universe, where those assumptions may not hold. Francesco D’Eugenio said all earlier mass estimates in the distant universe had been indirect and tied to assumptions from the local universe, where those assumptions may not hold.

Roberto Maiolino called the finding a remarkable one and said it amounts to a total revisiting of how black holes form and grow. The study, published in Nature and the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, does not explain how a black hole that large assembled so early. It does, however, provide concrete evidence that challenges conventional models of black hole evolution.

Additional Webb observations of another early-universe object called Abell2744-QSO1, or QSO1, support these findings. This object existed just 700 million years after the big bang. It is only 1,300 light-years across, yet it is magnified and triply imaged by the galaxy cluster Abell 2744, or Pandora’s Cluster, appearing in three different locations in the sky.

Keplerian Motion Reveals Black Hole Mass

Using the integral field unit on Webb’s NIRSpec, Ignas Juodžbalis and Cosimo Marconcini mapped the motions of hydrogen gas around QSO1, while the gas itself showed Keplerian motion-the kind of orderly rotation that lets astronomers read the mass at the center. Juodžbalis said the data show most of QSO1’s mass is concentrated in the black hole, because if the mass were spread out as it would be in a star-rich system, the gas would not rotate so perfectly.

Initial studies had already suggested QSO1 may be little more than a cloud of glowing hydrogen and helium gas circling a supermassive black hole estimated at 40 million times the mass of the sun. The warped view gave astronomers a rare chance to study a prototypical Little Red Dot more closely, more than 13 billion years after its light left the early universe.

These discoveries represent a new era in studying the early universe. The James Webb Space Telescope’s unprecedented capabilities, combined with natural gravitational lensing, allow astronomers to directly measure properties of objects that would otherwise remain invisible. As researchers continue analyzing data from additional distant galaxies, they expect to uncover more surprises about how the universe’s first black holes formed and evolved.

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