The massive “space horse” galaxy system could potentially host a huge black hole 36 billion times the mass of our sun.
Scientists peer into a halo of light called the “Einstein Ring” and spotted a monster in the universe. This is a kind of gravity lens. Lens occur when giant foreground objects such as galaxy clusters and black holes distort space-time and enlarge the light of objects that are further away behind them.
The discovery of Ultramassive Black Hole was explained on August 7th in the Royal Astronomical Society’s monthly notice magazine.
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When it comes to measuring young, large black holes, the field is full of uncertainty. Black holes (black holes displayed through radiation or effects on nearby objects cannot be directly displayed, so scientists use models to measure size. However, because young people are far from us and all models have “error bars,” size estimates cannot be considered completely accurate.
“It’s one of the biggest, but not that great,” Thomas Connor, an astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics, Harvard University and Smithsonian, who was not involved in the research, told Live Science. Connor added that the new paper shows at least one other black hole that could outweigh the ones of horseshoe-shaped galaxies.
As for perhaps the biggest black hole we know, a 2019 Astrophysical Journal study suggests that the Ton 618 is the highest size singularity, about 40 billion solar masses.
However, for astronomers, it’s not just the size of the black hole that’s interesting. More broadly, the large black holes in young galaxies emphasize how much we don’t know about the early universe.
Most large galaxies are thought to host super-large black holes. Therefore, galaxies and black holes may be co-evolving, the authors of the new study wrote. However, it is not clear whether evolution remains coupled between the host galaxy and the “super-large black hole.”
More and more observatory observatory like James Webb’s Space Telescope (JWST) is finding ultra-large black holes in very early universes.
Connor said there is no simple answer to that question yet.
He compared the size of a space horseshoe black hole, and those who liked it to find a toddler aged LeBron James in a nursery full of children. Connor is to understand how galaxies quickly grew “theoretical and computationally, incredibly challenging.”
The galaxy and its black holes can spur wider growth than expected in previous eras, gobbling most of the material available, and remain stationary for billions of years. But the idea still challenges “the fundamental limitations on how quickly things can grow,” Connor said.
Connor said the paradox of this giant black hole in a young universe forces astronomers to see the environment they have grown up to learn more about evolution. For example, dark matter may play a role that is not clearly understood.
The discovery of this latest black hole in the Cosmic Horseshoe is by chance possible, and includes the movement of a star paired with a gravity lens, Connor said. The problem is that lenses are not always available to astronomers, so there are likely other large galaxies with super-large black holes that are not easily visible.
“Are there any huge galaxies that need to find a way to measure black holes in a similar way?” he said.
Black Hole Quiz: How Massive is your knowledge of the universe?
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