The largest black hole ever detected is 36 billion times the mass of our sun. It exists near the upper limit predicted by our cosmological models, leaving astronomers with burning questions surrounding the relationship between black holes and their galaxy hosts.
In paper published on 7 August in Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical SocietyResearchers have announced the discovery of a black hole within a supermarket galaxy 5 billion light years of the earth, called the Cosmic Horse. The newly spotted monster is about 10,000 times heavier than the supermarket black hole at the core of the Milky Way, according to a Statement. Theoretical Predictions Customize the upper limit of the mass of a black hole by 40 to 50 billion times from the sun; This cosmic behemoto stands 36 billion times the mass of the sun so it is approaching near what calculations allow.
The enormous size of the cosmic horse, visibly inserted, bending the light of nearby galaxies into a horse form of a glow called an Einstein -ring. This sturdy heavenly church, along with more traditional detection methods, allowed astronomers to notice the new black hole that was still appointed.
“This is among the top 10 most massive black holes ever discovered, and very perhaps the most massive,” Thomas Collett, a study author and cosmologist at the University of Portsmouth in England, said in the Statement. “Most of the other black hole measures are indirect and have quite large uncertainties, so we really don’t know for sure what’s biggest.”
Most large galaxies seem to accommodate supermasive black holes at their core, including the Milky Way. COsmological models predicted that larger galaxies, such as the cosmic horses, could be able to accommodate even larger, “ultramasian” black holes. However, such ultramassive black holes were difficult to see, as the conventional method of tracking the movement of stars around them – star cinematic – did not work for sleeping, distant black holes.
The researchers have won this limitation by a gravitational lens, a method that does not necessarily depend “to” see “the movement of cosmic entities. They also took observational data from the A very large telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope Create a complete model of the galaxy. This bilateral approach allowed the team to glimpse a “sleeping” black hole “simply on its huge gravitational traction and the impact it has on its surroundings,” explained Carlos Melo, lead author and doctoral student at the University Federal do Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil, in the same statement.
“We detected the effect of the black hole in two ways,” Collett said. “It changes the path that light takes as it travels past the black hole, and it causes the stars in the inner areas of its hosting galaxy to move extremely fast. Combining these two measurements, we can be completely confident that the black hole is real.”
“What is particularly exciting is that this method allows us to detect and measure the mass of these hidden ultramassive black holes across the universe,” Melos added, “even when they are completely silent.”
Another notable aspect of the cosmic horse environment is that it is a “fossil group.” These dark, massive systems are mainly driven by gravitational forces and usually come as the final product of a series of galaxy mergers.
“It is likely that all the supermass black holes, which were originally in the accompanying galaxies, also now merged to form the ultramassive black hole we detected,” said Collett. “So we see the final state of galaxy formation and the final state of black hole formation.”
The new black hole is clearly impressive, and it will be exciting to see what other astronomers discover about it. It is also a fantastic proof of Mult-Messenger astronomy– The coordination of different signal types of the same astronomical event. This was essential to redefine phenomena that we were supposed to “end up” to study, but it is promising to see it support completely new discoveries. In all ways, there is no doubt that we are closer than ever to the core of the many mysteries of our universe.
