Biggest-ever black hole equal to 36 billion suns discovered in Cosmic Horseshoe system

Scientists Spot Monster Black Hole in Distant Galaxy (Image: NASA)

Staring deep into the universe often brings surprises. This time, scientists have found one of the largest black holes ever seen. It is so huge that it carries the mass of 36 billion suns.

Supermassive Black Hole in Cosmic Horseshoe

The black hole sits five billion light-years from Earth. It lies at the centre of a giant galaxy in the Cosmic Horseshoe system. The system gets its name from a bright horseshoe-shaped ring. This ring forms when light is bent by gravity, a process called gravitational lensing.

Researchers say its size is close to the maximum possible in the universe. It is around 10,000 times heavier than Sagittarius A*, the Milky Way's central black hole. That one holds about 4.15 million solar masses.

“This is among the most massive black holes we know,” said Thomas Collett, professor at the University of Portsmouth. “Our method gives us more certainty about its true mass.”

New Method to Measure Black Holes

The team used gravitational lensing along with stellar kinematics. This approach studies how stars move within a galaxy and around its black hole. Unlike many others, this black hole is dormant, meaning it is not actively pulling in matter. Sagittarius A* is also dormant.

Scientists believe all galaxies have supermassive black holes at their centres. The bigger the galaxy, the bigger its black hole. These cosmic giants are thought to start as “light seeds” from collapsed first stars or “heavy seeds” from direct gas cloud collapse. But direct proof has been hard to come by.

Other Recent Black Hole Finds

Astronomers last November saw another strange black hole, LID-568. This one was gobbling up matter at more than 40 times the Eddington limit, the alleged upper limit for consuming material. Information came from the James Webb Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory. The discovery contradicted current theories, that black holes can push beyond this limit.