The ultramassive black hole in the galaxy cluster Abell 1201 packs a mass of 30 billion suns.
Astronomers discovered the largest black hole ever seen
thanks to its ability to bend light. (Image credit: ESA/Hubble, Digitized Sky
Survey, Nick Risinger (skysurvey.org), N. Bartmann) |
Astronomers have just discovered what may be the largest
black hole known to date.
The giant black hole has a mass of 30 billion suns and sits
at the center of a galaxy located hundreds of millions of light-years from
Earth. Astronomers call the cosmic monster an ultramassive black hole, as
opposed to the usual galactic supermassive black holes that weigh anywhere
between a few million to a few billion solar masses.
Astronomers discovered the black hole during observations of
a galaxy located farther away from Earth than the one centered around the
monster black hole, while using the gravity of the foreground galaxy to magnify
the background object. This effect, known as gravitational lensing, is a result
of gravity bending the light around extremely massive objects. Serving as
nature's own telescope, gravitational lensing frequently helps astronomers to
increase the magnification of objects too distant to be properly visible to
human-made telescopes.
"This particular black hole, which is roughly 30
billion times the mass of our sun, is one of the biggest ever detected and on
the upper limit of how large we believe black holes can theoretically become,
so it is an extremely exciting discovery," James Nightingale, an
astrophysicist at Durham University in the U.K. and lead author of the new
study, said in a statement.
The team arrived at the size of the black hole by analyzing
the magnification of the foreground object in a series of images taken by the
Hubble Space Telescope. Using sophisticated computer modeling, the scientists
were able to simulate how much light bends around the foreground galaxy where
the black hole resides. They tested thousands of black hole sizes before
arriving at a solution that matched the observations.
The black hole, located in one of the galaxies of the Abell
1201 galaxy cluster, is the first discovered using this technique. Although enormous,
the black hole is not very active, meaning it's not swallowing too much
material and therefore not producing strong X-ray radiation. Such black holes
are nearly impossible to study by other methods.
"Most of the biggest black holes that we know about are
in an active state, where matter pulled in close to the black hole heats up and
releases energy in the form of light, X-rays, and other radiation,"
Nightingale said. "However, gravitational lensing makes it possible to
study inactive black holes, something not currently possible in distant
galaxies. This approach could let us detect many more black holes beyond our
local universe and reveal how these exotic objects evolved further back in
cosmic time."
The findings were published on Wednesday, March 29, in the
journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
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