Largest Black Hole Ever Found in Cosmic Horseshoe Galaxy
Largest black hole ever found, 36 billion suns heavy.
Scientists have uncovered a colossal supermassive black hole, potentially the largest ever discovered, with a staggering mass equivalent to 36 billion suns. Located five billion light-years away at the heart of a massive galaxy in the Cosmic Horseshoe system, this "cosmic behemoth" is distinguished by its horseshoe-shaped light ring, a result of gravitational lensing.
The black hole, described by study author Thomas Collett from the University of Portsmouth, is among the top 10 most massive ever identified and may claim the top spot. “We’ve got much more certainty about its mass thanks to our new method combining gravitational lensing and stellar kinematics,” Collett explained. This black hole is 10,000 times heavier than Sagittarius A*, the Milky Way’s central black hole, which has a mass of 4.15 million suns.
Despite its immense size, this black hole is "dormant," not actively consuming surrounding matter, similar to Sagittarius A*. The discovery, made possible by analyzing the motion of stars and gravitational lensing effects, pushes the boundaries of black hole size, nearing the theoretical upper limit of what the universe allows.
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Supermassive black holes are believed to reside at the core of every galaxy, with larger galaxies hosting bigger ones. Theories suggest these giants form from "seed" black holes, either through the collapse of the universe’s earliest stars or direct gas cloud collapse, though observational evidence has been limited until now.
This finding follows another breakthrough last November, when scientists identified LID-568, a supermassive black hole devouring matter at over 40 times the Eddington limit, challenging existing models. The Cosmic Horseshoe’s black hole, observed using advanced techniques, offers new insights into the formation and growth of these cosmic titans, reshaping our understanding of the universe’s most massive objects.
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