Scientists Just Found One of the Largest Black Holes Ever—And It’s Warping Light!

A team of astronomers has discovered one of the biggest black holes ever found. They used a method called gravitational lensing to detect it. The findings were published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

The team, led by Durham University in the UK, used gravitational lensing. This happens when a galaxy in front bends the light from a farther object, making it look bigger. They also used powerful computer simulations at the DiRAC HPC facility to see how light bends around a black hole located hundreds of millions of light-years away.

They found a huge black hole in a foreground galaxy. It is over 30 billion times the mass of our Sun, making it one of the largest ever seen by astronomers.

This is the first time a black hole has been found using this method. The team ran many computer simulations, changing the mass of the black hole each time, to see how light would travel to Earth.

When they included a supermassive black hole in one simulation, the light’s path perfectly matched real images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.

A gravitational lens works when a nearby galaxy’s gravity bends and magnifies the light from a galaxy behind it. This makes it appear multiple times and lets scientists see it in greater detail.

The study, which also included researchers from Germany’s Max Planck Institute, suggests that many more massive black holes could be found using this method. It could also help scientists understand how they grow so large.

The discovery actually began in 2004 when Professor Alastair Edge, an astronomer at Durham University, spotted a large arc of light while reviewing galaxy images.

Eighteen years later, with the help of sharp images from NASA’s Hubble Telescope and powerful computers at Durham University, Dr. James Nightingale and his team studied it further.

The team hopes this discovery is just the beginning. They believe that with future large telescopes, scientists will find more black holes and learn about their sizes and growth.

The research was supported by the UK Space Agency, the Royal Society, and the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). The European Research Council also provided support.

This work used the DiRAC Data Intensive Service (CSD3) and the DiRAC Memory Intensive Service (COSMA8). These are hosted by the University of Cambridge and Durham University for the DiRAC High-Performance Computing facility.

Dr. James Nightingale, the lead author from Durham University’s Department of Physics, said, “This black hole, which is about 30 billion times the mass of our Sun, is one of the largest ever found. It is close to the upper limit of how big we think black holes can get, so this is an exciting discovery.”

Dr. Nightingale also explained, “Most of the biggest black holes we know are active, meaning they pull in matter, heat it up, and release energy as light, X-rays, and other radiation.”

“However, gravitational lensing lets us study inactive black holes, which is usually impossible in faraway galaxies. This method could help us find more black holes beyond our local universe and understand how they evolved in the past.”