SPACE/COSMOS

Magnetic field helps binary star systems form

National Institutes of Natural Sciences

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Visualization of gas flows around a binary protostar system calculated by ATERUI III. The gas shown in red orbits around one of the two protostars. The gas shown in blue orbits around the combined binary system. The gas shown in green is being expelled from the system and is carrying away angular momentum. The present research shows that the magnetic field plays an important role in expelling gas and angular momentum.

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Credit: Matsumoto, Hotokezaka, Inayoshi 2026

New simulations show that interactions with a magnetic field can work to decrease the distance between still forming binary protostars. These results can help explain the characteristics of the binary star systems observed in the Milky Way. These results can also be extrapolated to binary black holes, giving insights into how super massive black holes evolve.

 

Stars form from clouds of interstellar gas that collapse into dense regions known as molecular cloud cores. Multiple stars form close together simultaneously, and in some cases two stars will become gravitationally bound to each other, forming a binary star system. Observations suggest that these binary systems form early on, before the stars are even fully formed. Astronomers have struggled to explain how these still forming “protostars” can pull together into binary systems so quickly.

 

New simulations using multiple supercomputers including the ATERUI III supercomputer for astronomical simulations and its predecessor ATERUI II, both at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, have shown that interactions between an interstellar magnetic field and the gas around the protostars can remove angular momentum from the protostar pair, allowing the binary systems to form within a realistic time period. In the simulation run with zero magnetic field performed as part of this research, the protostars actually moved farther apart, indicating the importance of the magnetic field in the process.

 

The simulations also suggest that the same process could work on massive binary black holes in the gas-rich heart of a new galaxy formed from the merger of two smaller galaxies. This would help explain how massive black holes can move close enough to merge and form a supermassive black hole. Direct simulation of massive binary black holes over the timespans required to spiral towards each other is still computationally challenging, so rigorous investigation of the effects of magnetic fields on massive binary black holes remains a topic for future investigation.

 

Visualization of gas flows around a binary protostar system calculated by ATERUI III [VIDEO] 

Visualization of gas flows around a binary protostar system calculated by ATERUI III. The first half of the video shows a close-up view around the binary protostars. The second half shows a wide-field view of the system. You can see how the outflow escaping from the disk around the binary system carries angular momentum far away.

Credit

Matsumoto, Hotokezaka, Inayoshi 2026

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Journal

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

DOI

10.1093/mnras/stag669 

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Magnetic-field-induced inspiral of binaries with circumbinary disc: black hole and protostellar systems

JWST measures mass of a dormant black hole from the early universe for the first time

Astronomers have made the first direct mass measurement of a dormant black hole lurking at the center of a galaxy from the early universe

Carnegie Institution for Science

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JWST and gravitational lensing enabled an international team of astronomers led by Carnegie Science's Andrew Newman to measure the mass of a dormant black hole from the early universe for the first time.

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Credit: Credit: Navid Marvi/Carnegie Science

Pasadena, CA— A team of astronomers led by Carnegie’s Andrew Newman has made the first direct mass measurement of a dormant black hole lurking at the center of a galaxy from the early universe.

Although the black hole—a behemoth 6 billion times the mass of our Sun—is no longer lighting up its surroundings, the researchers were able to determine its mass by using JWST to detect the motion of stars near the galaxy’s center that are being affected by the black hole’s gravity.

Their findings are published in Science.

In comparison, actively feeding black holes are easy to spot. Astronomers have been finding them for decades by looking for quasars—some of the brightest objects in the cosmos, which are powered by gas falling into a black hole at the center of a galaxy.

The black hole the team measured sits at the center of MRG-M0138, a massive galaxy whose light has traveled to JWST from a time when the universe was only about 3 billion years old. The galaxy is no longer forming stars and its central black hole is also quiet.

Prior to this result, astronomers had only successfully used this technique for determining black hole masses in the local universe. In 2020, the Nobel Prize was awarded for detecting the black hole at the center of the Milky Way by tracing the orbits of individual stars.

The collective motions of stars in galaxy centers have been used to weigh black holes to a distance of about 700 million light years. But without JWST’s sophisticated suite of instruments and the help of a phenomenon called gravitational lensing, it was not possible to undertake this type of measurement for more distant galaxies.

“We were able to detect this black hole at a distance of 10 billion light years by combining JWST’s sharp vision with a natural magnifying glass,” Newman explained.

MRG-M0138 is located behind a massive cluster of galaxies, which magnifies and stretches its appearance. As a result, the distant galaxy appears about 30 times larger than it normally would.

“By combining JWST data with gravitational lensing, we could peer inside the black hole’s sphere of influence, where its gravity boosts the speeds of stars,” Newman explained. “This is one of the best techniques we have to weigh a black hole, so we were excited to extend it to a much earlier period in cosmic history.”

Only a handful of dormant black holes this massive have been found before, all in the nearby universe.

The discovery offers new clues about how black holes and galaxies grew together in the early universe. Nearby galaxies show close connections between the masses of their central black holes and the properties of the galaxies around them. But it has been difficult to test whether these relationships already existed billions of years ago. The researchers’ findings suggest that the densest galaxies were sites of rapid black hole growth early in the history of the cosmos.

Although now dormant, MRG-M0138 was probably a powerful quasar in its past. Energy released by a rapidly growing black hole can burn off or eject the gas that fuels the birth of stars, which could have put the brakes on star formation in the galaxy.  

Future observations will push this work even further. The team is now analyzing JWST data on other similar galaxies. The Euclid satellite and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will reveal far more examples of gravitational lensing than are currently known. And the Giant Magellan Telescope, now under construction at Carnegie Science’s Las Campanas Observatory in Chile with Carnegie as a founding partner, will have the power to study the motions of stars in distant galaxies in much greater detail than JWST.

The researchers expect that applying their methods to more galaxies will help astronomers understand how the most massive black holes formed, grew, and shaped the evolution of galaxies.

__________________

Founded in 1902, Carnegie Science is an independent research institution that pursues scientific breakthroughs to transform our understanding of life, planets, and the universe. Carnegie Science researchers ask and answer the biggest questions of our time, defining new areas of study and leading bold investigations in the life and environmental sciences, Earth and planetary science, and astronomy and astrophysics. Building on more than a century of groundbreaking discovery, Carnegie Science advances basic science to expand the frontiers of knowledge for all.

 

A clean, high-resolution version of Image 1

Credit

NASA/JWST

 

JWST and gravitational lensing enabled an international team of astronomers led by Carnegie Science's Andrew Newman to measure the mass of a dormant black hole from the early universe for the first time.

Credit

Navid Marvi/Carnegie Science

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Journal

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.adx5816 

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

A stellar dynamical mass measurement of an inactive black hole at redshift 2

Article Publication Date

4-Jun-2026

Researchers weigh the most distant dormant black hole

University College London

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: James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) image of the highly distorted red galaxy MRG-M0138 seen through a foreground cluster of galaxies (white sources). Via the phenomenon of gravitational lensing, the same background galaxy is multiply imaged four times and the white square shows the most magnified image which was studied by Newman and colleagues using the NIRSpec Integral Field Spectrograph onboard JWST. The data measures the velocity for each portion of the image within the white square. The top bar shows an angular scale of 5 arcsec.

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Credit: NASA/JWST

The most distant, nearly invisible dormant black hole has been detected and ‘weighed’ by an international team of astronomers that includes researchers from UCL.

The study, published in Science, identified a dormant black hole at the heart of a galaxy known as MRG-M0138 located over 10 billion light years away. It is the most distant dormant black hole yet detected, 15 times farther away than the previous record.

The black hole’s mass is about 6 billion times that of the sun, and is being observed at a time when the universe was only about 3 billion years old, about a quarter of its current age, offering unprecedented details into black holes in the early universe.

To find this, the team used data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to track the motion of stars orbiting around the otherwise invisible black hole to measure its mass. Though the technique – known as stellar dynamics – has been used to measure dormant black holes in galaxies much closer to Earth, this is the first time it has been used to weigh one located such a great (cosmological) distance away.

Senior Author, Professor Richard Ellis (UCL Physics & Astronomy) said: “Determining how stars collectively move within the core of this distant galaxy has allowed us to measure the mass of its otherwise undetectable supermassive black hole. By demonstrating the feasibility of such a technique for galaxies in the early universe, we can now undertake a more complete census of how black holes develop over time and infer their role in shaping galaxy evolution.”

Measuring an invisible black hole

Though black holes themselves don’t emit any light, gaseous material that falls into them can emit a great deal of radiation. These “active galactic nuclei” are sometimes referred to as quasars and are easy to identify as they are some of the most luminous objects in the cosmos.  

However, the supermassive black hole in MRG-M0138 is dormant. With no gaseous material falling into it, its presence can only be inferred from the motions of nearby stars.

The team was able to detect its presence and accurately measure its mass by observing the collective motion of the stars moving around it. How fast they move and the differences between the motions of stars close to the black hole and those farther away allowed the researchers to accurately calculate the mass of the black hole at the centre.

It’s a technique similar to what has been used to measure the mass of the black hole at the centre of our own galaxy – the ‘Milky way – and several other nearby galaxies, but it’s the first time it’s been used on an object at such a great distance. Previously, the most distant galaxy similarly studied with this technique was only 700 million light years away.

Ordinarily the motions of stars in a galaxy so far away would be impossible to observe, but the team overcame this by using a natural cosmic magnifying glass known as gravitational lensing. The gravitational influence of another galaxy, located directly between MRG-M0138 and Earth, bends the light around it, refocusing the background image and enlarging it 30 times. Using this, the researchers were able to reconstruct the internal details of the distant galaxy to a much higher resolution than would otherwise be possible.

Lead author Dr Andrew Newman of the Carnegie Science in Pasadena California said: “By combining JWST data with gravitational lensing, we could peer inside the black hole’s sphere of influence, where its gravity boosts the speeds of stars. This is one of the best techniques we have to weigh a black hole, so we were excited to extend it to a much earlier period in cosmic history.”

Only a few dormant black holes this massive have previously been found, but all at far closer distances.

A peek into the early universe

The discovery offers new clues about how black holes and galaxies grew together in the early universe. Local galaxies have revealed a close relationship between their masses and those of their central black holes, but more data is needed from earlier cosmic times for both active and dormant supermassive black holes to fully understand this relationship.

The researchers found that not only is the black hole itself dormant, but the surrounding galaxy is similarly inert and no longer forming new stars. Likely, MRG-M0138 probably once hosted a luminous quasar in its past. The researchers think that when the black hole first formed and rapidly grew, the energy it released burned off or ejected the free-floating gas in the galaxy which is critical for the formation of new stars.

The team expects that additional observations from the JWST and other space telescopes will reveal many more dormant black holes from the early universe. This would offer new insights into their role in stopping star formation, as well as how dormant black holes can reactivate again when large amounts of matter start to flow into them.

 

Notes to Editors

For more information or to speak to the researchers involved, please contact Michael Lucibella, UCL Media Relations. T: +44 (0)75 3941 0389, E: m.lucibella@ucl.ac.uk

Andrew B. Newman, Meng Gu Sirio Belli, Richard S. Ellis, et al, ‘A stellar dynamical mass measurement of an inactive black hole at redshift 2’ will be published in Science on Thursday 4 June 2026, 19:00 UK time, 14:00 US Eastern time and is under a strict embargo until this time.

The DOI for this paper will be 10.1126/science.adx5816

Additional material

Images can be found at: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/pybp502jxoyi2ygizv5t8/AGrefzOPdVSLSVeydk4y5V4?rlkey=ocskvk31shh8pphfo7jc6xt0x&st=jv01428z&dl=0

 

About University College London (UCL) 

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UCL turns 200 in 2026. Join us for a year of bicentennial events and celebration.  

www.ucl.ac.uk 

 

 

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Journal

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.adx5816 

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

A stellar dynamical mass measurement of an inactive black hole at redshift 2

Article Publication Date

4-Jun-2026

 

Organized microbial ‘workforces’ keep Earth’s underground biosphere running

Underground ecosystems consistently assemble into functional microbial guilds

Northwestern University

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Prof. Magdalena Osburn removes a sample during a site visit.

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Credit: Sanford Underground Research Facility

By studying life deep inside a former gold mine, a Northwestern University-led team of scientists uncovered evidence that Earth’s hidden biosphere operates less like a random collection of microbes and more like an organized workforce.

In one of the most comprehensive long-term studies of deep underground microbial life to date, the researchers tracked how microbial communities shifted across six sites over four years. From site to site, the ecosystems were incredibly different from one another but largely stable through time. 

They discovered these underground ecosystems consistently assemble into functional guilds. While stable microbes maintain core processes, more responsive microbes capitalize on new opportunities as they arise. Together, these populations create a division of labor that helps underground ecosystems survive in one of Earth’s most extreme and energy-starved environments.

By identifying how these hidden microbial communities organize and function, scientists could improve understanding of Earth’s biogeochemistry, including the global carbon cycle. The work also could offer clues into how life survives in similarly harsh environments elsewhere in the solar system.

The study will be published on Wednesday (June 3) in the Journal of Geophysical Research – Biogeosciences. The paper is a part of a special issue dedicated to the life and work of Jan Amend, a geobiochemistry pioneer who passed away in March 2024.

“Within the goldmine, we sampled six spots, ranging from 250 meters deep to 1500 meters deep,” said Northwestern’s Magdalena Osburn, who led the study. “We thought we might see some subtle variation with depth but assumed the microbial communities should be broadly similar. That’s not what we found at all. We found that each site is its own little microcosm, and they looked very little like other sites — even nearby sites. We thought it would be like sampling different spots in the same forest, but it was more like sampling different islands in the same ocean.”

An expert on geobiology, Osburn is an associate professor of Earth and planetary science at Northwestern’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences.

A goldmine of life

Hosting roughly 20% of Earth’s microbial life, the deep underground is one of the planet’s largest ecosystems. But, because the deep underground is difficult to access and study over long periods of time, this vast ecosystem remains among the least understood. 

To access this mysterious subterranean world, Osburn and her team used the former Homestake Mine in Lead, South Dakota. Established in 1876 during the Black Hills Gold Rush, the mine was once the largest and deepest gold mine in the Western Hemisphere. Now the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF), the deep underground laboratory hosts a number of research experiments across a range of disciplines. In 2015, Osburn established six experimental sites, collectively called the Deep Mine Microbial Observatory (DeMMO), throughout SURF.

By boring holes into rocks inside the mine, Osburn and her team capture fracture fluids, comprising water and dissolved gases. Some of these fluids are up to 10,000 years old and teeming with microbial life that is otherwise isolated and ignored. In 2023, Osburn published a study focused on eight fluid samples collected during one visit. In the new study, Osburn wanted to see how these communities changed over time.

“This was a real gap in the literature that we thought we could fill,” she said. “Most microbial samples from the subsurface are from one point in time. We wanted to see what happened if we made a time series.”

Between 2015 and 2019, Osburn’s team repeatedly sampled microorganisms and monitored the chemistry flowing through multiple underground sites at DeMMO. Then, they took the samples back to Osburn’s lab at Northwestern. There, she and her team sequenced specific genetic markers, ultimately identifying which microbes were present in each sample.

Stable crews and responsive teams

The scientists found that each sample site hosted a distinct microbial community shaped by local chemistry and geology. Surprisingly, they did not find a universal microbiome shared across all sites. Instead, each underground environment maintained its own stable microbial community.

“Because deep underground environments share extreme conditions, including darkness, isolation and limited energy, we thought we’d find a common set of specially adapted microbes,” Osburn said. “But effectively, we found there is not a core microbiome anywhere in this mine. We did not expect that.”

The team found that each underground community was organized around two broad groups of microbes. A stable group remained consistently present over time, forming the ecological backbone of the ecosystem. These microbes quietly sustain life underground by recycling carbon and surviving on extremely limited resources. 

The second group behaved more dynamically. These microbes fluctuated over time, consuming various chemicals, including sulfur, nitrogen and iron, as they became available underground. 

“The core community has a low and slow metabolism,” Osburn said. “Then this other community of organisms is poised to respond to pulses of nutrients when they become available. Earthquakes, for example, can trigger chemical changes that release a supply of nutrients, but those don’t happen often.”

The new findings suggest that life in extreme environments may not require specific organisms to thrive. Instead, deep underground ecosystems may be structured more around shared functions rather than shared species.

“I have a friend who says, ‘Every town needs a plumber,’” Osburn said. “These sites reflect that idea. Each one is filled with different types of microbes, but all have a ‘plumber.’”

Understanding biological consequences

This work offers a new lens for evaluating how human activity may affect the underground environment. As industry increasingly looks below ground for carbon storage and geothermal energy extraction, understanding the microbial systems living there is critically important. Because these communities help drive chemical reactions involving carbon, sulfur, nitrogen and metals, disturbing them could alter underground chemistry in unexpected ways.

“If we give microbes chemicals that they can metabolize, they will wake up,” Osburn said. “We’ve identified populations that are poised to use iron, sulfur and nitrogen, and they are just waiting for the opportunity. If they wake up, they could start corroding our metals in infrastructure and wells. Understanding these microbial communities could help us better predict and manage the biological consequences of engineering the deep subsurface.”

The study, “Microbial ecology of the heterogeneous terrestrial deep biosphere over 4 years in the Deep Mine Microbial Observatory (DeMMO),” was supported by NASA, the David and Lucille Packard Foundation and the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research.

 

Prof. Magdalena Osburn collects fracture fluids, composed of water and dissolved gases.

Credit

Sanford Underground Research Facility

Exterior view of the former goldmine turned laboratory.

Credit

Sanford Underground Research Facility

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Journal

Journal of Geophysical Research Biogeosciences

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Cells

Article Title

Microbial ecology of the heterogeneous terrestrial deep biosphere over 4 years in the Deep Mine Microbial Observatory (DeMMO)

Article Publication Date

3-Jun-2026