August 12, 2025 | 10:08 am
SCIENTISTS in astronomy have recently discovered one of the largest black holes ever detected, with a mass equal to 36 billion suns. In the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society published on August 7, this object is said to be located in one of the two galaxies that make up the Cosmic Horseshoe system, about 5 billion light years from Earth.
"Among the top 10 largest black holes ever found, and likely the most massive," said Thomas Collett, the study's author and a professor at the University of Portsmouth, England, in a written statement quoted from Space on Friday, August 8, 2025.
The black hole is classified as dormant or not actively accreting matter in its vicinity. Researchers mentioned that its size is closely related to its massive parent galaxy. "We think their sizes are closely related because as galaxies grow, they can channel material into the central black hole," he said.
Collet mentioned that some material enlarges the black hole, but much of it emits extremely bright energy called quasar. He said that this quasar releases a large amount of energy into its host galaxy, preventing gas clouds from forming new stars.
For comparison, the black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy, Sagittarius A*, only has a mass of about 4.15 million suns. This difference shows how extreme the sizes of the black holes are in the Cosmic Horseshoe system.
This discovery uses a method that does not require an active black hole. The team utilized the gravitational lensing effect-bending of light due to the huge gravitational pull-which makes the light from the background galaxy appear to form an almost complete ring around the foreground galaxy.
The team detected the effect of this black hole in two ways, by altering the path of light passing through it and by accelerating stars in the region within its host galaxy. "Combining both measurements makes us fully confident that this black hole is real," Collet said.
Carlos Melo, the lead author of this study, added that this detection heavily relies on its extraordinary gravitational pull and its effects on the surrounding environment. "Interestingly, this method enables us to detect and measure the mass of ultra-massive hidden black holes throughout the universe, even when they are completely dormant," said Melo, who is a doctoral candidate at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil.
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