Astronomers discover mysterious dark object via gravity alone

Astronomers have reported the discovery of a dark cosmic object, a mysterious “perturber” with a mass equivalent to about one million suns and likely hosting a black hole at its center. The object was identified exclusively through the enormous gravitational influence it exerts on its surroundings, according to a study published Monday in Nature Astronomy, Space.com reports.

The object is located about 11 billion light-years from the Sun and was identified in 2025, becoming the most distant cosmic object ever discovered solely through its gravitational effects, CE Report quotes AGERPRES.

Astronomers believe a black hole lies at its core. “The inner central part is consistent with the hypothesis of a black hole or an extremely dense stellar nucleus, which surprisingly accounts for about a quarter of the object’s total estimated mass,” said Simona Vegetti of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Germany, who led the research.

“As we move away from the center, the density flattens into a large, disk-like component. This is a structure we have never seen before, so it could represent a new class of dark objects,” she added.

This unusual structure was discovered within the gravitational lens system JVAS B1938+666. Gravitational lensing is a phenomenon first predicted by Einstein in his 1915 theory of general relativity. It occurs when light from a background source is bent by the curvature of spacetime caused by a massive foreground object.

The JVAS B1938+666 system consists of massive bodies located between 6.5 and 11 billion light-years away, including this “mysterious perturber,” which is the most distant element of the system.

An international team of astronomers attempted to reconstruct the object’s mass distribution, revealing its so-called density profile. This proved extremely challenging, as the system includes multiple bodies, dominated by a massive elliptical galaxy. Unlike the others, however, the mysterious perturber is completely invisible.

To investigate it, researchers analyzed small distortions it causes in the overall gravitational lens arc and compared data from several telescopes, including the Green Bank Telescope, with different dark matter distribution models. None of these models could explain the object.

“It has a very strange profile: extremely dense at the center but enormously extended,” said team member Davide Massari of the National Institute for Astrophysics in Bologna.

As reported by CE Report, future studies may use telescopes operating at other wavelengths, including the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). If no visible or infrared light is detected even with JWST, scientists say it would suggest an object whose properties are difficult to explain with current dark matter models.