Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers have discovered an oddball galaxy, dubbed the Infinity Galaxy, that could be host to a "direct collapse black hole." That is, a black hole originally created directly from a vast cloud of collapsing gas and dust rather than a dying star.
The Infinity Galaxy gets its name from the fact that its shape resembles an infinity symbol (a sideways 8) with two red lobes or "nuclei." This shape is thought to have arisen because the Infinity Galaxy was formed as two disk galaxies engaged in a head-on collision.
What makes this highly unusual is the fact that this black hole sits between the two colliding galaxies in a vast cloud of gas, rather than in either respective nucleus. From its perch between these galaxies, the black hole now feeds greedily on that gas, but researchers think that same cloud also once birthed it. That would make this the first observational evidence of the direct collapse pathway of black hole birth.
Source: www.space.com
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