The James Webb is trending again after astronomers detected a black hole so big that it has made scientists doubt their knowledge of the universe! That much? That much!! And the best part is that it was something accidental, they were studying something else and suddenly an unknown galaxy appeared before them, a monster they cataloged it. The biggest monster so far.
They called it The Cosmic Horseshoe, and inside it hides the monster we are talking about, a magnitude that exceeds any scientific expectation!
A monster in the form of a hole
It is a black hole, and it could be one of the largest ever recorded, with a gravitational force so extreme that it bends the light of other nearby galaxies! If for you this is incredible, imagine for the experts, who believe this finding is a unique opportunity to understand how the largest galaxies have formed and how they evolve.
And let’s put it in numbers, it is believed that this black hole is equivalent to 36,000 million solar masses, which places it among the ten largest in history, and perhaps in the first place. And yes, we know it is quite difficult to imagine those dimensions, but try to get the idea!
Hidden in the cosmos
The best thing is that they were not looking for this “monster,” but it was possible thanks to a combination of gravitational lenses and stellar kinematics, two methods that allow measuring the mass of celestial bodies impossible to observe directly by other means. The researchers noticed that the light from background galaxies curved as it passed near the object, forming an Einstein ring in the shape of a horseshoe.
That last detail was the definitive clue: they were facing an ultramassive black hole capable of distorting space-time. It is located about 5,000 million light years from Earth, but even so its presence alters the entire cosmos!
Bigger than science imagined
Professor Thomas Collet, from the University of Portsmouth, explained that this black hole could be the most massive and gigantic detected so far. The research, published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, suggests that it was probably formed by the merger of several supermassive black holes from nearby galaxies, like a Saiyan but of black holes!
A new category only for this black hole
Yes, this black hole has turned upside down what we knew, and the experts believe that at the center of each galaxy there is usually a supermassive black hole, but the size of this one breaks all patterns! With a weight 10,000 times greater than that of the Milky Way, it falls into the category of ultramassive black holes, a true giant monster!
New questions and no answers
This discovery shows once again the capacity of current technology, such as the James Webb Telescope, without which it would be practically impossible to reveal secrets of the universe that we are gradually getting to know, but it also forces us to rethink theories about how black holes grow and their relationship with host galaxies.
What is the James Webb Telescope?
The James Webb Telescope is the most advanced space telescope ever built, launched in 2021 to look further and with more detail than any other. It is designed to observe the universe in infrared, which allows it to see galaxies formed more than 13,000 million years ago, study distant planets and discover secrets invisible to the human eye.
Scientists assure that what today seems like the limit of what is possible, tomorrow may be the beginning of much greater knowledge, can’t wait to discover what else this galaxy holds for us!