Friday, July 18, 2025

NASA’s Webb Finds Possible ‘Direct Collapse’ Black Hole - UNIVERSE

Editor’s Note: This post highlights a combination of peer-reviewed results and data from Webb science in progress, which has not yet been through the peer-review process.

As data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope becomes public, researchers hunt its archives for unnoticed cosmic oddities. While examining images from the COSMOS-Web survey, two researchers, Pieter van Dokkum of Yale University and Gabriel Brammer of the University of Copenhagen, discovered an unusual object that they nicknamed the Infinity Galaxy.

It displays a highly unusual shape of two very compact, red nuclei, each surrounded by a ring, giving it the shape of the infinity symbol. The team believes it was formed by the head-on collision of two disk galaxies. Follow-up observations showed that the Infinity Galaxy hosts an active, supermassive black hole. What is highly unusual is that the black hole is in between the two nuclei, within a vast expanse of gas. The team proposes that the black hole formed there via the direct collapse of a gas cloud – a process that may explain some of the incredibly massive black holes Webb has found in the early universe.

The Infinity Galaxy, the result of two colliding spiral galaxies, is composed of two rings of stars (seen as ovals at upper right and lower left). The two nuclei of the spiral galaxies are seen represented in yellow within the rings. Glowing hydrogen that has been stripped of its electrons between the two galaxies appears green. Astronomers have detected a million-solar-mass black hole that seems to be embedded within this large swath of ionized gas. They suggest that the black hole might have formed there through a process known as direct collapse. This image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) represents light at 0.9 microns as blue (F090W), 1.15 and 1.5 microns as green (F115W+F150W), and 2.0 microns as red (F200W).

NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, P. van Dokkum (Yale University)

Here Pieter van Dokkum, lead author of a peer-reviewed paper describing their initial discovery and principal investigator of follow-up Webb observations, explains why this object could be the best evidence yet for a novel way of forming black holes.

“Everything is unusual about this galaxy. Not only does it look very strange, but it also has this supermassive black hole that’s pulling a lot of material in. The biggest surprise of all was that the black hole was not located inside either of the two nuclei but in the middle. We asked ourselves: How can we make sense of this?

“Finding a black hole that’s not in the nucleus of a massive galaxy is in itself unusual, but what’s even more unusual is the story of how it may have gotten there. It likely didn’t just arrive there, but instead it formed there. And pretty recently. In other words, we think we’re witnessing the birth of a supermassive black hole – something that has never been seen before.

“How supermassive black holes formed is a long-standing question. There are two main theories, called ‘light seeds’ and ‘heavy seeds.’ In the light seed theory, you start with small black holes formed when a star’s core collapses and the star explodes as a supernova. That might result in a black hole weighing up to about 1,000 Suns. You form a lot of them in a small space and they merge over time to become a much more massive black hole. The problem is, that merger process takes time, and Webb has found incredibly massive black holes at incredibly early times in the universe – possibly even too early for this process to explain them.

“The second possibility is the heavy seed theory, where a much larger black hole, maybe up to one million times the mass of our Sun, forms directly from the collapse of a large gas cloud. You immediately form a giant black hole, so it’s much quicker. However, the problem with forming a black hole out of a gas cloud is that gas clouds like to form stars as they collapse rather than a black hole, so you have to find some way of preventing that. It’s not clear that this direct-collapse process could work in practice.

“By looking at the data from the Infinity Galaxy, we think we’ve pieced together a story of how this could have happened here. Two disk galaxies collide, forming the ring structures of stars that we see. During the collision, the gas within these two galaxies shocks and compresses. This compression might just be enough to form a dense knot, which then collapsed into a black hole.

“There is quite a bit of circumstantial evidence for this. We observe a large swath of ionized gas, specifically hydrogen that has been stripped of its electrons, that’s right in the middle between the two nuclei, surrounding the supermassive black hole. We also know that the black hole is actively growing – we see evidence of that in X-rays from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and radio from the Very Large Array. Nevertheless, the question is, did it form there?

This image of the Infinity Galaxy from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam is overlayed with a contour map of data from the Very Large Array radio telescope. The center pinpoint of radio emission perfectly lines up with the center of the glowing gas detected in the infrared in between the two nuclei of the galaxies. The detection of radio emission from supermassive black holes informs researchers about the energetics of the object, specifically how it is pulling in surrounding material.

NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, VLA, P. van Dokkum (Yale University)

“There are two other possibilities that come to mind. First, it could be a runaway black hole that got ejected from a galaxy and just happens to be passing through. Second, it could be a black hole at the center of a third galaxy in the same location on the sky. If it were in a third galaxy, we would expect to see the surrounding galaxy unless it were a faint dwarf galaxy. However, dwarf galaxies don’t tend to host giant black holes.

“If the black hole were a runaway, or if it were in an unrelated galaxy, we would expect it to have a very different velocity from the gas in the Infinity Galaxy. We realized that this would be our test – measure the velocity of the gas and the velocity of the black hole, and compare them. If the velocities are close, within maybe 30 miles per second (50 kilometers per second), then it becomes hard to argue that the black hole is not formed out of that gas.

“We applied for and received director’s discretionary time to follow up on this target with Webb, and our preliminary results are exciting. First, the presence of an extended distribution of ionized gas in between the two nuclei is confirmed. Second, the black hole is beautifully in the middle of the velocity distribution of this surrounding gas – as expected if it formed there. This is the key result that we were after!

“Third, as an unexpected bonus, it turns out that both galaxy nuclei also have an active supermassive black hole. So, this system has three confirmed active black holes: two very massive ones in both of the galaxy nuclei, and the one in between them that might have formed there.

“We can’t say definitively that we have found a direct collapse black hole. But we can say that these new data strengthen the case that we’re seeing a newborn black hole, while eliminating some of the competing explanations. We will continue to pore through the data and investigate these possibilities.”

About the Author

Pieter van Dokkum is a professor of astronomy and physics at Yale University. He is lead author on a paper about the Infinity Galaxy that has been accepted for publication by The Astrophysical Journal Letters, and principal investigator of Webb Director’s Discretionary program 9327.  

Source: NASA’s Webb Finds Possible ‘Direct Collapse’ Black Hole - NASA Science  

Built-in extinguishers can prevent battery fires and explosions - Engineering - Energy & Green Tech


Flame-retardant interfaces regulate dangerous gas production during battery overheating, slashing explosion risks. Credit: Ying Zhang

Researchers have designed a working prototype of a lithium metal battery equipped with a built-in fire extinguisher, which is activated if the battery overheats.

Lithium metal batteries are currently in limited use but have huge potential because they can store ten times as much energy as lithium-ion batteries. They deliver high energy density, which means they can store large amounts of energy relative to their size. This makes them ideal for electric vehicles, portable electronics and plenty of other energy-hungry devices.

Risk of fires and explosions

However, there is a problem. These types of batteries use lightweight lithium metal anodes and high-voltage nickel-rich oxide cathodes, a setup that can produce flammable gases. If these gases build up in a battery, they can cause fires or explosions.

To tackle this, Ying Zhang and colleagues at the Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, incorporated a flame-retardant polymer into the cathode of their prototype lithium metal battery.

Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers exposed the prototype battery and a standard lithium metal battery to gradually increasing temperatures, starting at 50 °C. When temperatures exceeded 100°C, both batteries began to overheat. 

Evolution of Chemical Maps for FRI@NCM811 Cathodes During ToF-SIMS Analysis. The video illustrates the chemical map evolution of FRI@NCM811 cathodes observed in a time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (ToF-SIMS) test. The playback speed has been accelerated 20 times for clarity and visualization. Credit: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2025). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2501549122

However, in the prototype, the special polymer started to break down and release chemicals (flame-inhibiting radicals) that acted like mini fire extinguishers. Specifically, they suppressed reductive reactions at the anode that are responsible for generating flammable gases.

When temperatures rose beyond 120 °C, the standard battery overheated to 1,000 °C within 13 minutes and burst into flames. Meanwhile, under the same experimental conditions, the prototype with the flame-retardant polymer reached a peak temperature of 220 °C and did not catch fire or explode.

"This smart gas management strategy enhances both thermal safety and electrochemical stability, offering a transformative pathway to fire-safe Li metal batteries for advanced energy storage applications," explained the researchers in their paper.

Safer batteries

If this fire-suppressing technology proves successful on a large scale, it could be a game changer for safer batteries in everything from portable electronics and medical devices to grid storage and electric vehicles. By reducing the risk of fires, this breakthrough could also encourage more people to switch their gas-guzzling cars for electric ones, as safety concerns are one reason some people remain hesitant.

Additionally, with a few modifications, the flame-retardant material can be incorporated into batteries using existing battery production methods, which could help speed up their rollout and acceptance. 

Source: Built-in extinguishers can prevent battery fires and explosions