The discovery of a "black hole" with a mass 33 billion times greater than the sun's mass

A team of astronomers spotted one of the largest black holes ever discovered, with a mass of about 33 billion times the mass of the Sun. Using a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing, the researchers took advantage of a nearby galaxy by turning it into a giant magnifying glass.

The British "Royal Astronomical Society" magazine said that this is the first black hole whose properties are determined thanks to a technique of monitoring through gravitational lensing, and this phenomenon results from the presence of a very large body, such as a galaxy or a huge black hole, as the team of researchers simulates the light that travels through the universe hundreds of thousands. times and each simulation includes a different mass black hole, which changes the journey of light to Earth.

She added, "Although observing galaxies is a possible issue, a black hole cannot be observed, because it is so dense that light cannot escape from it, which makes it invisible."

James Nightingale, an astronomer at Britain's Durham University and lead author of the study, said that this time astronomers were "very lucky" and were able to detect the light of a galaxy located behind the black hole, whose path appears to have been deflected by the presence of the black hole, about two billion light years from Earth. .

He explained that the gravitational lensing technique allows astronomers to "discover black holes in 99 percent of galaxies that cannot be observed currently" through traditional monitoring methods, because they are very far away.

He continued, "There are 500 gravitational lenses, at least one of which is associated with the presence of a massive black hole, but this landscape is about to change dramatically."

And he indicated that the European Space Agency's Euclid space telescope mission, which is scheduled to be launched next July, will launch the "big data era" for black hole observers, by creating a high-resolution map of part of the universe.

The discovery, made by James Nightingale and his colleagues, was based on computer simulations and images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.