(ORDO NEWS) — Scientists at Durham University in northern England have confirmed the existence of a supermassive black hole in the distant galaxy Abell 1201, located 2.7 billion light-years from Earth.
The mass of the discovered black hole is about 33 billion solar masses.
The most massive black hole known to science is considered to be an object located near the quasar TON 618 with a mass of about 66 billion solar masses.
A new celestial body was discovered using the Hubble Space Telescope and the principle of gravitational lensing, when incredibly massive accumulations of matter are used as a lens to magnify very distant objects in the universe.
Scientists have previously assumed the presence of a black hole in the galaxy Abell 1201, but it was believed that its mass is several times less.
“This particular black hole, about 30 billion times as massive as our Sun, is one of the largest space objects ever discovered.
It is close to the upper limit of how massive black holes can theoretically become in terms of mass, so this is an extremely exciting development,” said study leader James Nightingale, quoted by Sky News.
Nightingale added that the principle of gravitational lensing could be successfully used to detect inactive black holes that have stopped absorbing large amounts of matter, which in the process heats up and radiates energy.
“This approach could allow us to detect many more black holes outside of the universe closest to us and find out how these exotic objects mutated in the more distant past of the cosmos,” the scientist emphasized.
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