One of the biggest known black holes discovered due to its light-bending gravity

Source: The post is based on the article “One of the biggest known black holes discovered due to its light-bending gravity” published in Indian Express on 3rd April 2023

What is the News?

Astronomers have discovered an ultramassive black hole using gravitational lensing.

Which is the technique used by researchers to discover black holes?

Researchers used a technique known as gravitational lensing. This technique enabled them to closely examine how light is bent by a black hole inside a galaxy hundreds of millions of light-years from Earth.

Supercomputer simulations and images captured by the Hubble Space Telescope were also used to confirm the size of the black hole.

Significance of the discovery: The black hole discovered is roughly 30 billion times the mass of our Sun and is one of the biggest ever detected and on the upper limit of how large we believe black holes can theoretically become.

– Moreover, this new approach of gravitational lensing taken by the researchers could make it possible to study inactive black holes in distant galaxies, which is not currently possible with other existing techniques.

What is Gravitational lensing?

Gravitational lensing is the name given to the phenomenon where a foreground object—a galaxy or a black hole—bends the light from a more distant object behind it, magnifying it in the process.

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What is a black hole?

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