Researchers found a SMBH not located inside a galaxy, and they theorize that this could be an example of a direct collapse black hole that was created without stellar progenitors. This could easily explain the presence of early SMBHs.
Astrophysicists don’t know if direct-collapse black holes are real. They were hypothesized to explain how the Universe could contain supermassive black holes (SMBH) so early. They don’t require a stellar progenitor, nor do they require hierarchical merging. Instead, they collapse due to instability in a gas cloud, much like stars do.
Recently, astronomers working with images from the COSMOS-Web survey, a JWST survey observing more than one million galaxies across cosmic time, found something odd. It’s a double-nuclei galaxy likely formed by the collision of two galaxies. They nicknamed it the Infinity Galaxy because it resembles the infinity symbol.
But that’s not the odd part.
A supermassive black hole (SMBH) lies between the two, rather than in the nuclei. It sits in a vast field of gas, and researchers think it could be a much-hypothesized direct-collapse black hole. If it is, it can explain why there are such massive black holes so early in cosmic time.
https://www.universetoday.com/articles/the-jwst-might-have-found-the-first-direct-collapse-black-hole