{"paper":{"title":"The Infinity Galaxy: a Candidate Direct-Collapse Supermassive Black Hole Between Two Massive, Ringed Nuclei","license":"http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":["astro-ph.HE"],"primary_cat":"astro-ph.GA","authors_text":"Gabriel Brammer, Imad Pasha, Josephine F. W. Baggen, Michael A. Keim, Pieter van Dokkum, Priyamvada Natarajan","submitted_at":"2025-06-18T16:51:15Z","abstract_excerpt":"We report the discovery of an unusual z=1.14 object, dubbed the $\\infty$ galaxy, in JWST imaging of the COSMOS field. Its rest-frame near-IR light is dominated by two compact nuclei with stellar masses of $\\sim 10^{11}$ Msun and a projected separation of 10 kpc. Both nuclei have a prominent ring or shell around them, giving the galaxy the appearance of a figure eight or an $\\infty$ symbol. The morphology resembles that of the nearby system II Hz 4, where the head-on collision of two galaxies with parallel disks led to the formation of collisional rings around both of their bulges. Keck spectro"},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"2506.15618","kind":"arxiv","version":1},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"integrity":{"clean":true,"summary":{"advisory":0,"critical":0,"by_detector":{},"informational":0},"endpoint":"/pith/2506.15618/integrity.json","findings":[],"available":true,"detectors_run":[],"snapshot_sha256":"c28c3603d3b5d939e8dc4c7e95fa8dfce3d595e45f758748cecf8e644a296938"},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}