Half a dozen galaxies discovered caught in a supermassive black hole could help explain the development of the huge enigmas.
The discovery was made by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) using the Very Large Telescope in Chile and marks the first time such a close grouping has been seen so soon after the Big Bang.
Astronomers believe the six galaxies got ensnared in the cosmic ‘spider’s web’ of the supermassive black hole when the universe was less than a billion years old, so its discovery helps scientists better understand how supermassive black holes formed and grew to their enormous sizes so quickly.
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The research, published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, led scientists to suggest the web structure may have formed with the help of dark matter, which is thought to attract huge amounts of gas in the early universe.
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