(CNN) — An extremely huge black hole, considered one of the largest ever detected, has been discovered by astronomers using a new technique.
The findings, published by the Royal Astronomical Society, show that the black hole is more than 30 billion times the mass of the sun, a scale rarely seen by astronomers.
The researchers described it as an “extremely exciting” discovery that opens up “tempting” possibilities for detecting more black holes.
The team, led by Durham University in the UK, used a technique known as gravitational lensing, in which a nearby galaxy is used like a giant magnifying glass to deflect light from a more distant object. This allowed them to closely examine how a black hole bends light within a galaxy hundreds of millions of light-years from Earth.
Supercomputer simulations and images captured by the Hubble Space Telescope were also used to confirm the size of the black hole.
It is the first black hole detected using gravitational lensing, with the team simulating that light travels through the universe hundreds of thousands of times, according to a Royal Astronomical Society press release.
An artist’s work of a black hole in the Milky Way.
“This particular black hole, which is regarding 30 billion times the mass of our Sun, is one of the largest ever detected and is at the upper limit of how big we think black holes can theoretically get, so which is an extremely exciting discovery,” said study lead author James Nightingale, an observational cosmologist in the Department of Physics at Durham University.
“Most of the largest black holes we know of are in an active state, where matter approaching the black hole heats up and releases energy in the form of light, X-rays, and other radiation,” Nightingale added.
“However, gravitational lensing makes it possible to study quiescent black holes, something that is currently not possible in distant galaxies. This approach might allow us to detect many more black holes beyond our local universe and reveal how these exotic objects evolved further back in cosmic time.”
The researchers believe the finding is significant as it “opens up the tantalizing possibility that astronomers may discover much more quiescent and extremely enormous black holes than previously thought” and “investigate how they grew so large,” according to the press release.
The story of this particular discovery began in 2004 when astronomer Alastair Edge, a research fellow at Durham University, noticed a giant arc from gravitational lensing while reviewing images from a galaxy survey, according to the press release.
The team has now reviewed the discovery and explored it further with the help of NASA’s Hubble telescope and the DiRAC COSMA8 supercomputer.
Extremely huge black holes are the largest objects in the universe and are a rare find for astronomers.
Their origins are unclear, and some believe they formed from galaxies merging billions of years ago.
Every time one galaxy merges with another, stars are lost and a black hole gains mass, which explains the incredibly high mass of some black holes.
