A team of British astronomers has used gravitational lensing to find one of the largest black holes ever, making a massive discovery.
This supermassive black hole with a solar mass of 32.7 billion lies at the center of the giant elliptical galaxy Abell 1201 BCG in the galaxy cluster Abell 1201 about 2.7 billion light-years away from Earth.
Astronomers at Durham University made the discovery with the help of DiRAC COSMA8 supercomputing, creating hundreds and thousands of simulations of light traveling through space, one model captured by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. I was able to match it to the actual route.
“This particular black hole is about 30 billion times the mass of the Sun, making it one of the largest black holes ever detected, and how big a black hole could theoretically be. It’s a very exciting discovery because it’s at the upper end of the dolphin,” said lead author James Nightingale of the Center for Extragalactic Astronomy at the University of Durham.
Although this is the first black hole to be discovered using this technique, gravitational lensing has previously been used to probe space from Earth, allowing the exploration of supernovae and distant colliding galaxies, as well as other black holes. can now be explored. Gravitational microlensing also works to spy on distant small objects like single stars.
In this case, gravitational lensing, which uses the foreground galaxy to bend and magnify light from distant objects, allowed scientists to measure supermassive black holes. This is largely thanks to Abell 1201, such an exemplary gravitational lens. But it opens the door to a better understanding of the mysteries of black holes and the space around them.
“Most of the largest black holes we know are in an active state, where matter that is drawn near them heats up and releases energy in the form of light, X-rays and other radiation.” said Nightingale. “But gravitational lensing makes it possible to study dormant black holes, which is currently not possible in distant galaxies.”
Their discovery is the culmination of nearly two decades of research, dating back to 2004, when Durham University astronomer Alastair Edge discovered a giant arc of gravitational lensing while examining images of the galaxy. Hubble data and supercomputing technology allowed the team to revisit their initial findings.
“This approach will allow us to detect even more black holes beyond our local universe, revealing how these exotic objects evolved during the space age,” Nightingale said.
The largest black hole we know of today is TON 618, thought to be 66 billion times the mass of the Sun.
The study was published in a journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
See how gravitational lensing informed the team about the existence of black holes in the video below.
Light-bending gravity reveals one of the largest black holes ever discovered
Source: Durham University
