The Infinity Galaxy was formed by the collision of two spiral galaxies, with a young supermassive black hole at its center, surrounded by a huge gas cloud.
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope continues to make new discoveries one after another. It recently discovered a strange cluster of galaxies that scientists claim has helped them unravel the secret of black hole formation.
Scientists have named it the ‘Infinity Galaxy’. They say it supports an important theory in physics, which explains how some supermassive black holes form.
Hearing the name ‘Infinity Galaxy’, it may seem like a place for a crazy comic book monster like ‘Thanos’ to hang out. However, the scientists actually gave the name based solely on the appearance of the galaxy, according to the report by technology site Engadget.
It has two small, red centers, surrounded by rings. Together, the structure looks like the letter '∞', which symbolizes infinity. Hence the name.
Scientists say what's inside is even more amazing. Its image is much lower resolution than other eye-catching images from the Webb Telescope. The Infinity Galaxy was formed by the collision of two spiral galaxies, with a young supermassive black hole at its center, surrounded by a huge cloud of gas.
Supermassive black holes can be millions, even billions, or even trillions of times larger than our sun. Is This specific black hole is roughly a million times bigger than the sun.
Scientists say the Infinity Galaxy strongly supports the 'direct collapse theory' of black hole formation. Most black holes are formed when massive stars collapse. However, it is very challenging to comprehend the formation of various supermassive black holes.
The theory says that different small black holes merge over time to form a large supermassive black hole. However, the problem is that some supermassive black holes formed very quickly after the Big Bang.
According to scientists, some supermassive black holes, like the one in the "Infinity Galaxy," are created by the direct collapse of massive gas clouds. This is tha "Infinity Galaxy" provides perhaps the strongest evidence in favor of the direct collapse theory.
We believe we have discovered an example of how the direct collapse theory can be applied in this case by examining the data from the Infinity Galaxy.
"Two disk-shaped galaxies collide. As a result, the circular or ring structure of stars that we see is formed. During the collision, the gas between these two galaxies collides with each other and is compressed. This contraction can be so intense that it creates a dense knot of matter, which then collapses to become a black hole.”
While the current data cannot fully confirm the collapse theory, researcher Dokum said, “We can say that this new data strengthens our idea that we are seeing a newborn black hole. At the same time, it also eliminates some alternative explanations.
“We will continue to examine this data in more depth and explore different possibilities.”
