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Gigantic black hole has more than 30 billion solar masses

2023-04-03T16:19:25.971Z


A newly discovered black hole is so massive it catapults itself straight into the top 10 largest objects. Researchers are now hoping for more discoveries.


A newly discovered black hole is so massive it catapults itself straight into the top 10 largest objects.

Researchers are now hoping for more discoveries.

Durham - At the center of most galaxies is a supermassive black hole.

In the heart of the Milky Way, for example, is the black hole Sagittarius A*, which is rather small with its four million solar masses.

Most recently, a supermassive black hole was discovered ejected from its galaxy.

A research team led by James Nightingale from Durham University in Great Britain has now discovered a particularly large example of a black hole.

"This particular black hole, which is about 30 billion times the mass of our Sun, is one of the largest black holes ever discovered," said Nightingale, who led the study, which is published in the journal Monthly Notices of the

Royal

Astronomical 

Society

 .

"It's at the upper limit of how large we think black holes can theoretically get -- an extremely exciting discovery," Nightingale says.

Because the black hole is so large, it is no longer considered "supermassive" but "ultramassive."

Look into the depths of the universe - This is how "Hubble" sees the universe

Look into the depths of the universe - This is how "Hubble" sees the universe

Newly discovered: gigantic black hole in the center of a galaxy

The giant black hole is at the center of a galaxy in the Abell 1201 galaxy cluster, about 2.7 billion light-years from Earth.

It has a mass of 32.7 billion suns, putting it in the top 10 known giant black holes.

The huge object could only be discovered with a trick, because black holes have a peculiarity: they swallow everything that approaches them.

And because they don't let anything escape - not even light can escape - they are virtually "invisible".

There are only two ways to discover them:

  • Matter interacting with the black hole:

    It emits energy in the form of light or radiation before falling into an active black hole.

    Alternatively, black holes eject matter in the form of so-called "jets" into space - this is also how a black hole can be discovered.

  • Black Hole Mass Changes:

    The black hole's large mass deforms space and can deflect and amplify light.

    Large objects that are in line of sight with the black hole can be enlarged or even duplicated in this way - experts call this phenomenon gravitational lensing.

Huge black hole is dormant and was discovered with a trick

"Most black holes that we know of are in an active state, where matter is pulled in close to the black hole, heats up, and then emits energy in the form of light, X-rays, and other radiation," Nightingale said in a statement.

However, only the second method came into question for the discovery of the ultramassive black hole, because the object is currently inactive.

The research team discovered the black hole because it magnified and distorted objects.

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Black holes in space are extremely difficult to detect.

© imago/Imaginechina-Tuchong

"With the help of gravitational lenses, inactive black holes can also be examined," emphasizes the lead author of the study, who is already hoping for further applications: "With this approach, we could detect many more black holes beyond our local universe and find out how these exotic objects move on evolved back in cosmic time," said Nightingale.

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List of rubrics: © imago/Imaginechina-Tuchong

Source: merkur

All news articles on 2023-04-03

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