One of the largest black holes ever found, with a mass over 30 billion times the mass of the Sun, has been discovered.
The supermassive black hole was discovered by a team of astronomers using a phenomenon called “gravitational lensing.”
Above: Artist’s impression of the giant black hole. Source: ESA/Hubble, Digitized Sky Survey, Nick Risinger (skysurvey.org), N. Bartmann
Led by Britain’s Durham University, the team used simulations using a supercomputer and ultra-high-resolution images from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, to examine how light from a black hole bends inside a galaxy hundreds of millions of light-years from Earth.
The team simulates light traveling through the universe hundreds of thousands of times, to spot the supermassive black hole, the first ever found using this technique.
