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Astronomers Find ‘Dark Object’ 11 Billion Light Years Away Through Gravity

Astronomers Find ‘Dark Object’ 11 Billion Light-Years Away Through Gravity

The object is believed to be roughly 100 times less massive than any similar object previously found by lensing.

Written by Gadgets 360 Staff | Updated: 13 January 2026 16:07 IST

Astronomers Find ‘Dark Object’ 11 Billion Light-Years Away Through Gravity

Photo Credit: NASA

Scientists have yet to determine the actual nature of the object (representative image)

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Highlights

Dark object detected solely through gravitational lensing
Smallest mass ever found using lensing techniques
Could be dark matter clump or hidden dwarf galaxy

Astronomers have observed a completely dark mysterious object, which is approximately a million times more massive than the mass of the Sun. It is found about 11 billion light-years distant and was identified in 2025 through its gravitational impact on the light of a background galaxy. This renders it the farthest object ever to have been observed by pure gravity. Scientists believe that it might be a new form of universe structure altogether.

Discovery by Gravitational Lensing

According to the research, the object was spotted in a so-called “Einstein ring,” where a foreground galaxy bends light from a more distant galaxy. A subtle kink or “pinch” in this lensed image revealed the hidden mass. Because the object emits no light, it was detected solely via its gravity. By combining data from radio telescopes around the world, astronomers effectively used Earth as a single, giant telescope to catch the faint distortion.

Remarkably, at about one million solar masses, it is roughly 100 times less massive than any similar object previously found by lensing – the smallest dark clump yet detected by this technique.

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Dark Matter or Hidden Galaxy?

Scientists have yet to determine the actual nature of the object. It may be a lump of dark matter, which has no stars; it may be an extremely small dwarf galaxy, which is too small to be visible in the light of telescopes. According to Vegetti, the mass is concentrated in a central black hole or massive star cluster (about a quarter of the mass), and the rest is distributed in a very broad halo.

In the future (as with NASA's James Webb Space Telescope), it is possible to notice any weak starlight and eventually obtain the answer.

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Further reading: Science, Space