Latest news with #supermassiveBlackHole
WIRED
6 days ago
- Science
- WIRED
This Might Be the Most Massive Black Hole Ever Discovered
Aug 13, 2025 5:47 AM New measurements of the galaxy at the heart of the 'Cosmic Horseshoe' indicate that it could house the most massive object ever seen in the universe. Astronomers have identified what could be a new supermassive black hole, and with an estimated mass 36 billion times that of the sun, it is about 10,000 times heavier than the black hole at the center of the Milky Way. This would make it among the most massive objects ever detected. The finding, published in the Monthly Notice of the Royal Astronomical Society, was made by researchers from the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation at the University of Portsmouth in the UK in collaboration with the Federal University of Rio Grande in Brazil. The scientists located the signs of the new supermassive black hole within a gravitational lens known as the 'Cosmic Horseshoe,' pictured below. A gravitational lens occurs when the gravity of a massive object, such as a galaxy, is so great that it bends light and time that passes near it, distorting light traveling from behind. The Cosmic Horsehoe was discovered by the Hubble telescope in 2007. The galaxy LRG 3-757 sits at its center, while the blue horseshoe shape surrounding this yellow-colored object is distorted light emitted from another galaxy beyond it. LRG 3-757 is one of the most massive galaxies ever observed by astronomers, having a mass 100 times that of the Milky Way, and it sits approximately 5.6 billion light-years away from Earth. The gravitational lens known as the Cosmic Horseshoe, so named because of the appearance of the incomplete ring of blue light that surrounds its central galaxy, LRG 3-757. Photograph: NASA/ESA Thanks to this luminous structure, astronomers have been able to calculate the mass of the black hole that presumably lies at the center of LRG 3-757 (while not definitively proven, large galaxies are assumed to have a black hole at their center). Although there are no direct observations of this black hole, measurements of the motion of light in the ring and the velocity of stars in the inner regions of the galaxy are consistent with the presence of an ultramassive black hole. 'By combining these two measurements we can be completely confident that the black hole is real,' Thomas Collett, professor of astrophysics at the University of Portsmouth, said in a press statement. Collett also suggests that a black hole of such proportions could only originate from the merger of two supermassive black holes resulting from the collision of galaxies. Astronomers are still debating whether this will be the shared fate of our galaxy, the Milky Way, and neighboring Andromeda. What About TON 618 and the Like? Any astronomy enthusiast knows that the most massive object found in the universe so far is potentially TON 618. According to the most widespread estimates, this black hole has a mass equivalent to 66 billion suns, almost twice that of the Cosmic Horseshoe. However, scientists are cautious about labelling TON 618 as the most massive object ever seen. Being located more than 10 billion light-years away, its host galaxy and surrounding objects cannot be observed in detail. What little is known about it comes from analysis of its brightness and from theoretical models that allow us to estimate its size. The uncertainty is too high to consider it the most massive black hole known. In contrast, the Portsmouth researchers argue that the Cosmic Horseshoe black hole offers greater observational certainty, unlike distant, almost mythological holes like TON 618. As such, they claim that their discovery could represent the most massive black hole confirmed to date. This story originally appeared on WIRED en Español and has been translated from Spanish.
Yahoo
07-06-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Astronomers Astonished by Largest Explosion Since the Big Bang
You've heard of how mighty supernovas are, or of the ungodly amounts of energy released by gamma ray bursts. But astronomers have just discovered a type of cosmic blast that puts all those to shame. They're called "extreme nuclear transients" (ENTs) — and they're quite literally the most powerful explosion witnessed since the dawn of time. What produces ENTs is appropriately catastrophic: a star, at least three times as massive as our Sun, being obliterated by a supermassive black hole. "We've observed stars getting ripped apart as tidal disruption events for over a decade, but these ENTs are different beasts, reaching brightnesses nearly ten times greater than what we typically see," Jason Hinkle, lead author of a new study published in the journal Science Advances, and a researcher at the University of Hawai'i's Institute for Astronomy (IfA), said in a statement about the work. "Not only are ENTs far brighter than normal tidal disruption events, but they remain luminous for years, far surpassing the energy output of even the brightest known supernova explosions," Hinkle added. The first clues emerged when Hinkle and his team were trawling through public data collected by the European Space Agency's Gaia mission, a vast three-dimensional map of over two billion stars and counting. Amid this stellar sea, they noticed flares of light, including one recorded in 2016 and another in 2018, that inexplicably lasted for several years. Most cosmic explosions, for comparison, only shine for several weeks. "When I saw these smooth, long-lived flares from the centers of distant galaxies, I knew we were looking at something unusual," Hinkle said. He wasn't the only one on the scent. Back in 2023, another team of astronomers reported a similar detection with the Zwicky Transient Facility in California. Following-up on these findings, Hinkle conducted additional observations with other telescopes, including the Keck Observatory in Hawaii, and linked these phenomena together. The most formidable ENT, assigned the screenname-esque moniker of Gaia18cdj, unleashed 25 times more energy than the most powerful supernova ever detected. In one year, it radiated energy equal to all the energy our Sun will produce in its entire lifetime across billions of years — times one hundred. Typically, a supernova produces "just" one Sun's worth of energy. To produce such a tremendous blast, a star has to undergo a brutal, slow death. That's what sets these apart from when a star falls into a black hole in a typical tidal disruption event, which culminates in a powerful but brief flash. An ENT draws out the torture, forming a disk of the star's shredded entrails that glows for years. This aspect of a supermassive black hole's diet could tell us a lot about how they grew to their monstrous masses — a mystery that has long haunted astronomers — and how they stamped their name on a crucial period of the universe's history. "By observing these prolonged flares, we gain insights into black hole growth when the universe was half its current age and galaxies were busy places — forming stars and feeding their supermassive black holes ten times more vigorously than they do today," said coauthor Benjamin Shappee, an associate professor at IfA, in a statement. "These ENTs don't just mark the dramatic end of a massive star's life. They illuminate the processes responsible for growing the largest black holes in the universe," Hinkle added. More on astronomy: Scientists Spot Mysterious Object in Our Galaxy Pulsing Every 44 Minutes
