One of the largest black holes ever discovered, an ultramassive black hole, has been found by researchers.
Using a technique called gravitational lensing, the researchers detected the ultramassive black hole by analyzing the effects of its gravity.
Researchers have discovered a black hole through gravitational lensing for the first time, raising hopes that more black holes can be found using this method in the future.
After almost two decades of puzzling over a strange arc in data, scientists have identified it as evidence of an ultramassive black hole, revealing how little is still known about these enigmatic objects.
Researchers can learn a lot from observing newly spotted black holes, especially if they belong to a boundary-pushing subclass, like the recently discovered ultramassive black hole, which is tens of billion times larger than our Sun.
The recently discovered ultramassive black hole, roughly 30 billion times the mass of the Sun, is on the upper limit of size for black holes and was found using gravitational lensing, a first for black hole discovery, according to lead author James Nightingale from Durham University.
Gravitational lensing allowed researchers to gather information about the ultramassive black hole by analyzing the object in the middle that was bending and magnifying the light from the target.
By analyzing the effect of the gravity of a galaxy with a black hole at its center on the light from the object behind it, researchers found an ultramassive black hole that is 30-billion-solar-mass through multiple simulations.
Discovery of ultramassive black hole through gravitational lensing offers hope for finding more black holes, including inactive ones, and studying their evolution in the distant universe.
Next