Latest news with #CosmicHorseshoe
NDTV
8 hours ago
- Science
- NDTV
Biggest-Ever Black Hole With Mass Of 36 Billion Suns Discovered: 'Cosmic Behemoth'
Scientists may have discovered the biggest black hole ever that holds a mass equivalent to that of 36 billion suns. This supermassive black hole is located five billion light-years away from Earth and sits at the centre of a giant galaxy in the Cosmic Horseshoe system, named for its striking horseshoe-shaped ring of light formed by gravitational lensing. The gigantic black hole's size is close to the theoretical upper limit of what is possible in the universe. It is 10,000 times heavier than the black hole at the centre of our own Milky Way galaxy, Sagittarius A*, which holds a mass of 4.15 million suns. "This is amongst the top 10 most massive black holes ever discovered, and quite possibly the most massive," said Thomas Collett, study author and a professor at the University of Portsmouth in England. 'Most of the other black hole mass measurements are indirect and have quite large uncertainties, so we really don't know for sure which is biggest. However, we've got much more certainty about the mass of this black hole thanks to our new method.' Researchers managed to find the 'cosmic behemoth' using a combination of gravitational lensing and stellar kinematics (the study of the motion of stars within galaxies and the speed and way they move around black holes). Despite being massive in size, the newly-discovered black hole has been dubbed a "dormant" black hole, meaning it is not actively swallowing matter in its surroundings. Notably, Sagittarius A* is also a dormant black hole. Supermassive black holes Scientists are of the view that every galaxy in the universe has a supermassive black hole at its centre and that bigger galaxies host bigger ones, known as supermassive black holes. Current theories surmise that supermassive black holes evolve from initial "seeds" formed either through the collapse of the universe's first stars (light seeds) or by direct gas cloud collapse (heavy seeds). However, these theories have lacked substantial observational backing so far. In November last year, scientists discovered a supermassive black hole, devouring matter at a phenomenal rate -- over 40 times the theoretical limit, called the Eddington limit. Named LID-568, the black hole was discovered using data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and Chandra X-ray Observatory. The black hole's hunger to consume matter challenged the existing models by suggesting that these bodies are capable of exceeding the Eddington limits.
Gizmodo
a day ago
- Science
- Gizmodo
Heaviest Black Hole Ever Found Pushes Limit of What's Cosmologically Possible
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 a paper published August 7 in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, researchers announced the discovery of a black hole inside a supermassive galaxy 5 billion light-years from Earth, dubbed the Cosmic Horseshoe. The newly spotted monster is roughly 10,000 times heavier than the supermassive black hole at the Milky Way's core, according to a statement. Theoretical predictions set the upper bound of a black hole's mass at 40 to 50 billion times that of the Sun; this cosmic behemoth stands at 36 billion times the Sun's mass, so it comes precariously close to what calculations allow. The Cosmic Horseshoe's enormous size visibly warps spacetime, bending the light from nearby galaxies into a horseshoe-shaped glare called an Einstein Ring. This fortuitous celestial quirk, along with more traditional detection methods, allowed astronomers to spot the new black hole, which has yet to be named. 'This is amongst the top 10 most massive black holes ever discovered, and quite possibly the most massive,' Thomas Collett, study co-author and a cosmologist at the University of Portsmouth in England, said in the statement. 'Most of the other black hole mass measurements are indirect and have quite large uncertainties, so we really don't know for sure which is biggest.' Most large galaxies appear to host supermassive black holes at their core, including the Milky Way. Cosmological models predicted that bigger galaxies, like the Cosmic Horseshoe, might be capable of hosting even larger, 'ultramassive' black holes. However, such ultramassive black holes were difficult to spot, as the conventional method of tracking the motion of stars around them—stellar kinematics—wasn't effective for dormant, faraway black holes. The researchers overcame this limitation with gravitational lensing, a method that doesn't depend on necessarily 'seeing' the motion of cosmic entities. They also took observational data from the Very Large Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope to create a comprehensive model of the galaxy. This two-pronged approach allowed the team to spot a 'dormant' black hole 'purely on its immense gravitational pull and the effect it has on its surroundings,' explained Carlos Melo, study lead author and PhD student at the Universidade 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 is altering the path that light takes as it travels past the black hole, and it is causing the stars in the inner regions of its host galaxy to move extremely quickly. By 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 Horseshoe's environment is that it's a 'fossil group.' These dark, massive systems are primarily driven by gravitational forces and usually come as the final product of a series of galaxy mergers. 'It is likely that all of the supermassive black holes that were originally in the companion galaxies have also now merged to form the ultramassive black hole that we have detected,' said Collett. 'So we're seeing the end state of galaxy formation and the end state of black hole formation.' The new black hole is clearly impressive, and it'll be exciting to see what else astronomers discover about it. It's also a fantastic demonstration of multi-messenger astronomy—the coordination of different signal types from the same astronomical event. This has been essential in redefining phenomena that we supposedly 'finished' studying, but it's promising to see it support entirely new discoveries. Either way, there's no doubt that we're inching closer than ever to the core of our universe's many mysteries.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Science
- Yahoo
The biggest black hole ever seen? Scientists find one with mass of 36 billion suns
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. About 5 billion light-years away from where you're sitting, in one of the most massive galaxies on record, there exists an astonishing black hole. It was only just measured by scientists who managed to peer through the fabric of warped space-time — and it appears to hold a mass equivalent to that of 36 billion suns. Yes, billion. "This is amongst the top 10 most massive black holes ever discovered, and quite possibly the most massive," Thomas Collett, study author and a professor at the University of Portsmouth in England, said in a statement. More specifically, the black hole is found in one of two galaxies that make up the Cosmic Horseshoe system and is what's known as a "dormant" black hole. This means it's a relatively quiet black hole; it isn't actively chomping on matter in its surroundings, as opposed to an active black hole that is accreting matter from a disk that circles it, known as an accretion disk. The black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy, Sagittarius A*, is also a dormant black hole — but, for context, it only holds the mass of about 4.15 million suns. The fact that the Cosmic Horseshoe black hole is found in such a massive galaxy and that Sagittarius A* is found in our more modestly sized Milky Way is probably not a coincidence. In fact, the team behind the new measurement is hoping to learn more about the apparent size connection between supermassive black holes and their parent galaxies. "We think the size of both is intimately linked," Collett said, "because when galaxies grow they can funnel matter down onto the central black hole. Some of this matter grows the black hole, but lots of it shines away in an incredibly bright source called a quasar. These quasars dump huge amounts of energy into their host galaxies, which stops gas clouds condensing into new stars." This brings us to another key aspect of the team's findings: the way this black hole was measured to begin with. The research team was able to utilize a unique approach that doesn't rely on the black hole being an actively accreting one. Without active feeding, black holes can kind of hide behind the veil of the cosmos. It is the accretion itself that usually gives these objects away. Such commotion produces lots of emissions, like X-rays, that scientists here on Earth can detect. Naturally, it's also far easier to measure the precise masses of black holes via such emissions. However, there is one characteristic of black holes that even dormant ones can't suppress: their immense gravitational pull. And the greater the gravitational pull, the greater the warp in space-time, as predicted by Albert Einstein's general relativity theory. Where Einstein comes in In a nutshell, Albert Einstein's famous theory of general relativity explains the true nature of gravity. It suggests that gravity isn't quite an intrinsic, elusive property of an object that pulls things down. In other words, Earth itself isn't really pulling us down to the ground. Rather, general relativity states that objects with mass (all objects, including you and me) warp the four-dimensional fabric of space-time — and these warps influence the motion of other objects caught up in the folds. For instance, imagine a trampoline on which you place a ball. That ball would warp the trampoline inward. Now, imagine placing a smaller ball on the trampoline. That smaller ball would fall inward as well, along the warped trampoline's fabric and sit right next to the original ball. The trampoline in this case is space-time, the original ball is Earth and the smaller ball is you. The big caveat in this analogy, however, is that this trampoline exists in three dimensions. We'd need to scale this up to the four-dimensional universe for it to start representing reality more accurately, but our brains have a hard time comprehending that dimension visually. Importantly for the team's new measurements, something that arises from warped space-time (in the fourth dimension, remember) is that physical matter isn't the only thing affected by the warps. Light gets affected, too — and that includes light emanating from galaxies, such as the other galaxy in the Cosmic Horseshoe. This is the effect the study team managed to take advantage of when spotting the newly confirmed black hole. Light from the Cosmic Horseshoe system's background galaxy was warped as it traveled past the foreground galaxy that contains black hole. The Cosmic Horseshoe system is actually an iconic example of this effect, which is called gravitational lensing. Not only does this system have a strong version of this effect, but each galaxy involved happens to be perfectly aligned such that the light-warped background galaxy appears as almost a perfect ring around the foreground galaxy. When this happens, it's called an "Einstein Ring." So, we're seeing an "almost" Einstein ring in this case. It's more like ... an Einstein horseshoe? After combining those gravitational lensing measurements with measurements of stars in the vicinity that appeared to be zipping around at high speeds, the researchers knew they were onto something. Though scientists have previously suggested a monster black hole lurks in the Cosmic Horseshoe system, concrete evidence of the object and of its precise size wasn't available until now. "We detected the effect of the black hole in two ways — it is altering the path that light takes as it travels past the black hole and it is causing the stars in the inner regions of its host galaxy to move extremely quickly (almost 400 km/s)," Collet said. "By combining these two measurements, we can be completely confident that the black hole is real." "Its detection relied purely on its immense gravitational pull and the effect it has on its surroundings," Carlos Melo, study lead author and a Ph.D. candidate at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil, said in the statement. "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, even when they are completely silent." What's next? There are quite a few ways to move forward on this work, one of which is, as mentioned, to reveal the link between galaxy size and supermassive black hole size — but another could be to zero in on the Cosmic Horseshoe black hole alone and learn how it became so utterly gigantic. The Cosmic Horseshoe is what's known as a "fossil group," which refers to the end stage of the "most massive gravitationally bound structures in the universe, arising when they have collapsed down to a single extremely massive galaxy, with no bright companions," according to the statement. The Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies will likely become a fossil group someday, seeing as they're likely on a path to colliding somewhere in the far future. That crash has recently been brought into question, but it's still a possibility. Nonetheless, the Cosmic Horseshoe could very well be a peek into our realm's final era. "It is likely that all of the supermassive black holes that were originally in the companion galaxies have also now merged to form the ultramassive black hole that we have detected," said Collett. "So we're seeing the end state of galaxy formation and the end state of black hole formation." The team's paper was published on Aug. 7 in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Solve the daily Crossword
Daily Mail
a day ago
- Science
- Daily Mail
Most massive black hole EVER discovered: Huge behemoth is 10,000 times heavier than the void at the centre of the Milky Way
Scientists have discovered the most massive black hole in the universe to date, boasting a size equivalent to 36 billion suns. It is located in the galaxy known as the Cosmic Horseshoe, five billion light-years from Earth. This behemoth is at least 10,000 times heavier than the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way. Astronomers say this is approaching the upper theoretical limit of what is physically possible in the universe. Scientists believe that every galaxy in the universe contains a supermassive black hole at its core. However, the largest galaxies of all could host even more colossal singularities called ultramassive black holes. Although there could be even larger voids lurking out among the stars, this is the biggest black hole that researchers have measured with a high degree of certainty. Co-author of the study Professor Thomas Collett, of the University of Portsmouth, says: 'This is amongst the top 10 most massive black holes ever discovered, and quite possibly the most massive.' The researchers believe that this ultramassive black hole owes its gargantuan mass to the size of its host galaxy. The Cosmic Horseshoe, where the black hole was found, is one of the biggest galaxies ever detected. Professor Collett says: 'We think the size of both is intimately linked, because when galaxies grow they can funnel matter down onto the central black hole.' That means the larger the host galaxy, the larger the black hole at its centre should be. However, the Cosmic Horseshoe is particularly interesting because it is what astronomers call a 'fossil group'. These colossal structures are left behind when an entire galaxy cluster collapses in on itself, crushing into a single large galaxy which progressively swallowed its neighbours. 'It is likely that all of the supermassive black holes that were originally in the companion galaxies have also now merged to form the ultramassive black hole that we have detected,' says Professor Collette. 'So we're seeing the end state of galaxy formation and the end state of black hole formation.' Even though this ultramassive black hole is absurdly large, it was actually extremely difficult for scientists to detect. Scientists are usually able to spot very distant black holes when they are 'accreting', or consuming, matter from their host galaxy. 'Some of this matter grows the black hole, but lots of it shines away in an incredibly bright source called a quasar,' says Professor Collett. These quasars release so much energy that they can be seen through telescopes on Earth and even prevent stars from forming in the surrounding galaxy. However, this newly discovered black hole is 'dormant' - meaning it isn't actively accreting any more matter or producing any tell-tale radiation. Instead, Professor Collette and his collaborators had to rely on how the black hole's enormous gravity affects the space around it. According to Einstein's theory of relativity, large masses bend and stretch the fabric of spacetime like a weight placed onto a trampoline. Really massive objects like black holes and galaxy clusters bend spacetime so much that the trajectory of passing light bends as it passes through these curved areas. For example, the Cosmic Horseshoe, where this black hole was found, is so large that it bends the light from a background galaxy into a horseshoe-shaped structure. Scientists call these Einstein Rings, and they are produced by a process known as gravitational lensing. In a new study, published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, the researchers use this feature of space to work out how big the black hole should be. Professor Collette says: 'We detected the effect of the black hole in two ways – it is altering the path that light takes as it travels past the black hole and it is causing the stars in the inner regions of its host galaxy to move extremely quickly - almost 400 km/s.' Measuring the movement of stars is considered to be the 'gold standard' for working out the mass of black holes, but it isn't possible to do so accurately when a galaxy is so far away. That means the researchers had to supplement their findings with a measurement of how the black hole warps the light around it to accurately estimate its mass. 'By combining these two measurements, we can be completely confident that the black hole is real,' says Dr Collette. What makes this discovery so exciting is that these methods open the door to finding and measuring more black holes elsewhere in space. That could help researchers solve the puzzle of how black hole mass is related to galaxy size. Lead researcher Carlos Melo, a PhD candidate at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) in Brazil, says: 'Typically, for such remote systems, black hole mass measurements are only possible when the black hole is active. 'But those accretion-based estimates often come with significant uncertainties. 'This method allows us to detect and measure the mass of these hidden ultramassive black holes across the universe, even when they are completely silent.' BLACK HOLES HAVE A GRAVITATIONAL PULL SO STRONG NOT EVEN LIGHT CAN ESCAPE Black holes are so dense and their gravitational pull is so strong that no form of radiation can escape them - not even light. They act as intense sources of gravity which hoover up dust and gas around them. Their intense gravitational pull is thought to be what stars in galaxies orbit around. How they are formed is still poorly understood. Astronomers believe they may form when a large cloud of gas up to 100,000 times bigger than the sun, collapses into a black hole. Many of these black hole seeds then merge to form much larger supermassive black holes, which are found at the centre of every known massive galaxy. Alternatively, a supermassive black hole seed could come from a giant star, about 100 times the sun's mass, that ultimately forms into a black hole after it runs out of fuel and collapses. When these giant stars die, they also go 'supernova', a huge explosion that expels the matter from the outer layers of the star into deep space.
Time of India
a day ago
- Science
- Time of India
Black hole 36 billion times Sun's mass discovered, likely the biggest ever in space
Scientists have identified what may be the most massive black hole ever observed, an ultramassive object with a mass of around 36 billion times that of the Sun. Located roughly 5 billion light-years from Earth, the black hole sits at the center of a giant galaxy in the Cosmic Horseshoe system, named for the striking horseshoe-shaped ring of light formed by gravitational lensing , an effect where massive objects bend the light of more distant galaxies behind them. Productivity Tool Zero to Hero in Microsoft Excel: Complete Excel guide By Metla Sudha Sekhar View Program Finance Introduction to Technical Analysis & Candlestick Theory By Dinesh Nagpal View Program Finance Financial Literacy i e Lets Crack the Billionaire Code By CA Rahul Gupta View Program Digital Marketing Digital Marketing Masterclass by Neil Patel By Neil Patel View Program Finance Technical Analysis Demystified- A Complete Guide to Trading By Kunal Patel View Program Productivity Tool Excel Essentials to Expert: Your Complete Guide By Study at home View Program Artificial Intelligence AI For Business Professionals Batch 2 By Ansh Mehra View Program The research, published August 7 in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, details the use of gravitational lensing and stellar motion data to uncover and weigh the previously undetected black hole. A Sleeping giant This black hole is considered dormant, meaning it is not actively feeding on material and therefore does not emit the radiation typically used to identify black holes. That made it invisible to traditional methods, which rely on high-energy signals like X-rays. Live Events Instead, researchers measured its mass by analyzing how its gravity warps space-time, bending light from a background galaxy into the Cosmic Horseshoe shape, and how stars within the galaxy orbit the core at extreme speeds, nearly 400 kilometers per second. By combining both effects, the team was able to calculate the black hole's enormous mass with high confidence. A new way to find the universe's heaviest objects The project was led by Carlos AO Melo, a PhD candidate at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil, in collaboration with Dr. Thomas Collett of the University of Portsmouth in the UK. The team used data from the Hubble Space Telescope and the MUSE instrument on the Very Large Telescope in Chile to carry out the analysis. The galaxy harboring this black hole is a so-called 'fossil group,' the result of a cosmic merger between multiple galaxies, which scientists believe may have led to the black hole's formation. When galaxies merge, their central black holes are expected to eventually combine as well, producing an even larger object over billions of years. This discovery adds weight to a growing body of evidence that supermassive black holes grow in tandem with their galaxies, and in some cases, may outgrow them entirely. The Milky Way and its neighbor Andromeda are on a collision course expected to culminate in a similar merged galaxy several billion years from now, potentially forming a black hole just as massive.
