James Webb Space Telescope Discovers Earliest Pair of Supermassive Black Holes, Challenging Formation Theories

Astronomers utilizing the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have identified a close pair of supermassive black holes, with estimated masses of 1.5 billion and 400 million Suns, respectively, that existed merely 900 million years after the Big Bang. This discovery, of a system named J1602+4228AB (Nāpōwawāʻenakaulua), presents a significant challenge to current astrophysical models, which struggle to explain how such massive black holes could have formed and grown so rapidly in the early universe. The finding offers a unique opportunity to study the co-evolution of the earliest massive galaxies and their central black holes through direct galaxy interactions. The original scientific results were published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters on November 10, 2026.