A massive body lurking 11 billion light-years away is captivating astronomers worldwide. This enigmatic object, weighing in at about a million suns, might contain a black hole at its center. Discovered in 2025, it’s the farthest body detected solely by its gravitational influence.
Scientists are confident that this strange entity has a core that behaves like a black hole or a dense stellar core. Surprisingly, this makes up roughly a quarter of the total mass. The rest takes on a unique, disk-like shape that hasn’t been seen before in space.
This extraordinary structure was found in the gravitational lens system known as JVAS B1938+666. Gravitational lensing occurs when a massive object bends the light from a more distant source, much like a lens. This bending not only reveals faraway galaxies but also provides insights into how mass is distributed in the lensing system.
Inside JVAS B1938+666, various massive bodies can be found, all between 6.5 billion to 11 billion light-years from us, including our mysterious disruptor. A team of astronomers worked hard to map out the mass distribution in this complex system. Team leader Simona Vegetti from the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics noted the challenge and excitement of exploring such a distant, low-mass object. “Every time we thought we had it figured out, something new surprised us,” she said.
To learn more about the disruptor, the team studied tiny shifts it caused in the gravitational arc of JVAS B1938+666. They used data from different telescopes, including the Green Bank Telescope. Yet, none of the dark matter models they applied could fully explain what they were observing.
Member Davide Massari from the National Institute for Astrophysics described the object’s unusual density profile: “It’s very dense at the center, but it extends out far beyond what we typically see.” This means it’s not just a regular galaxy or star system.
Future research using different wavelengths of light—like the cutting-edge infrared capabilities of the James Webb Space Telescope—might bring new insights. As Cristiana Spingola, another team member, suggested, if light emissions are found, it could be a unique ultracompact dwarf galaxy. If not, we might be looking at an object that defies our current understanding of dark matter.
This research shines a light on the mystery of the universe and keeps the quest for knowledge alive, as scientists strive to understand what lies beyond our current models.
The team’s findings were published in the journal Nature Astronomy on January 5.
