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Scientists Discover Way to Send Information into Black Holes Without Using Energy

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James Webb Telescope Finds Black Hole That May Have Built Its Own Galaxy

For decades, scientists believed galaxies came first and black holes followed—quietly forming at their centers after stars lived and died. But a new discovery from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is challenging that idea in a dramatic way. It suggests that in the early universe, a supermassive black hole may have formed first, and only later did its galaxy begin to grow around it.

This finding, published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, could reshape one of the biggest questions in astronomy: how did supermassive black holes form so early in cosmic history?

A cosmic mystery: black holes too big, too early

At the center of almost every galaxy today—including our own Milky Way—lies a supermassive black hole (SMBH). These giants can weigh millions to billions of times more than our Sun.

The mystery is not their existence, but their timing.

According to standard astrophysics, black holes begin as the collapsed cores of massive stars after a supernova explosion. Over time, they grow by pulling in gas and dust from their surroundings. But this growth has a natural speed limit known as the Eddington limit, where intense radiation from infalling matter pushes material away, slowing further growth.

This makes a big problem clear:
We have observed supermassive black holes just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang. That is far too little time for them to grow to such enormous sizes under normal rules.

So how did they get so big, so fast?

Competing ideas for their origin

Astronomers have proposed several explanations:

  • Small seed black holes that grew extremely fast for short periods

  • Intermediate black holes formed by repeated mergers in dense star clusters

  • Heavy seed black holes, formed already large at birth

The third idea is especially intriguing. It suggests that in the early universe, under extreme conditions, black holes could form directly from the collapse of massive gas clouds—without needing stars first. Some even suggest exotic primordial black holes, formed right after the Big Bang, possibly linked to early-universe physics ideas proposed by scientists like Stephen Hawking.

JWST looks back 13 billion years

To investigate this mystery, an international team led by Roberto Maiolino at the University of Cambridge used JWST to study a distant object known as QSO1.

This object existed when the universe was only about 700 million years old—a tiny fraction of its current age of 13.8 billion years.

QSO1 belongs to a strange class of objects called “Little Red Dots”, discovered by JWST. These are compact, extremely bright sources in the early universe. Some scientists believe they may represent young galaxies hosting rapidly growing black holes—but their nature is still debated.

What made QSO1 especially valuable is that it is gravitationally lensed by a foreground galaxy cluster. This cosmic lens acts like a natural telescope, magnifying its light and allowing astronomers to study it in much greater detail than usual.

Breaking down the environment of a newborn universe

Using JWST’s advanced instruments, the team performed a detailed spectral analysis, capturing light information from every point in a small region of sky. This technique allowed them to study both motion and chemical composition of gas around the black hole.

It revealed something remarkable.

They were able to measure the “sphere of influence” of the black hole—the region where its gravity dominates the motion of surrounding gas. This enabled them to estimate its mass more precisely than ever before in such a distant object.

But the chemical data told an even more surprising story.

A nearly untouched cosmic environment

In the early universe, the first elements were simple: hydrogen, helium, and trace amounts of lithium. Heavier elements like oxygen, carbon, and iron only appear later, forged inside stars and spread through supernova explosions.

But in QSO1, astronomers found something unexpected.

The surrounding gas showed extremely low chemical enrichment. In particular, oxygen levels were found to be less than 1% of that found in the Sun.

In simple terms, this region of space was almost chemically “pristine”—meaning very few stars had formed there yet.

The shocking implication: black hole before galaxy

This result changes the usual picture.

If there are very few heavy elements, then there cannot have been many stars. But the black hole in QSO1 is already massive and active.

This leads to a striking conclusion:

The black hole likely formed before the main galaxy around it fully developed.

Instead of a galaxy forming first and a black hole growing inside it, this case suggests the opposite may have happened.

The black hole may have acted as the gravitational seed, and the galaxy slowly formed around it over time.

The “heavy seed” explanation

Among all theories, this observation most strongly supports the heavy seed scenario.

In this model, black holes are not small objects that slowly grow. Instead, they are born already massive—possibly through the direct collapse of huge gas clouds in the early universe.

Under extreme early conditions—high density, intense radiation fields, and limited cooling—gas may have collapsed directly into a black hole without forming stars first.

This would explain how such massive objects existed so early in cosmic history.

Why this discovery matters

This finding is more than just a cosmic curiosity. It challenges a basic assumption in astrophysics: that galaxies build black holes.

Instead, it suggests a new possibility:

  • Black holes may have helped shape the formation of galaxies, not the other way around.

If confirmed, this would change how scientists understand:

  • The birth of galaxies

  • The growth of cosmic structures

  • The timeline of the early universe

  • The role of black holes in cosmic evolution

Still an open question

Despite the excitement, scientists remain cautious. One object alone cannot rewrite cosmic history. More observations of similar early-universe systems are needed to confirm whether QSO1 is unique or part of a broader pattern.

JWST is expected to continue uncovering more “Little Red Dots,” potentially revealing whether early black holes commonly formed before galaxies.

A new way of seeing the universe’s beginnings

The discovery of a possible “black hole first” system adds a new twist to our understanding of cosmic evolution.

Instead of a calm, orderly process where galaxies form and then host black holes, the early universe may have been far more chaotic—where giant black holes appeared first and galaxies slowly built themselves around these invisible giants.

As telescopes like JWST continue to peer deeper into space and further back in time, we may soon discover that the universe’s earliest structures did not follow the rules we once expected.

And in that ancient darkness, it may have been the monsters—black holes—that came first.

Reference: Roberto Maiolino et al, A black hole in a near pristine galaxy 700 Myr after the big bang, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (2026). DOI: 10.1093/mnras/staf2109

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