Jakarta –
Scientists uncover a black hole that has not been detected so far. The hole is in the central galaxy called Abell 1201 which is about 2.7 billion light years away and is 32.7 billion times the mass of the sun.
Launching Science Alert, a physicist James Nightingale from the University of Durham, UK, said this was a very interesting discovery and that the hole was the largest and had never been detected.
“This particular black hole, which is roughly 30 billion times the mass of our Sun, is one of the largest ever detected and is at the upper limit of how big we believe a black hole could theoretically become, so this is a very exciting discovery.” explained on the Science Alert website quoted on Saturday (1/4/2023).
Facts about Ultramassive Black Holes
The central galaxy or brightest cluster of galaxies (BCG) of Abell 1201 is a large, diffuse elliptical galaxy known as a strong gravitational lens.
Next to the BCG appears a galaxy that looks like an elongated smudge. Later, scientists discovered a second, fainter blotch, even closer to the galactic center.
According to them, the spots indicate the existence of a very massive black hole at the center of BCG. Even so, the data available is not detailed enough to resolve the central mass or reveal more about what is there.
Nightingale and his colleagues not only had access to the more recent observations, but also devised tools to understand them. They performed hundreds of thousands of simulations of light traveling through the universe, changing the mass of the black hole at the center of a galaxy, looking for results that replicate the lensing observed with Abell 1021 BCG.
They finally detected a massive black hole at the center of the galaxy with a black hole mass of 32.7 billion times the mass of the sun.
How Do Scientists Find Black Holes?
There are many black holes in the universe, but not all of them are active in processes that produce a lot of light when matter heats up before falling into the black hole. Also, they are not easy to penetrate.
Even in finding a black hole, scientists can not just get it because they do not emit light that can be detected. Scientists see the effect on objects around the black hole.
One way to find black holes is by gravitational lensing. This way occurs when space-time itself is warped by mass. Any light crossing a region of spacetime can appear very attractive to an observer observing from afar.
“Gravitational lensing makes it possible to study inactive black holes, something that is currently not possible in distant galaxies,” Nightingale said on the Science Alert website, quoted Saturday (1/4/2023).
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