Astronomers find tiniest black hole ever in distant galaxy
Astronomers just found something wild: a super-heavy, invisible object about a million times the mass of our Sun, sitting nearly 10 billion light-years away.
It's the tiniest of its kind ever detected at such a distance—and we only know it's there because of how it messes with light from galaxies behind it.
They used gravitational lensing
They used gravitational lensing, where massive objects bend light like a cosmic magnifying glass.
By noticing a tiny "pinch" in images captured by radio telescopes (like the Very Long Baseline Array and Green Bank Telescope), and crunching data on supercomputers, scientists pinpointed this hidden heavyweight.
It fits what scientists expect if dark matter is out there
This mystery object might be pure dark matter or an ultra-compact galaxy with no stars—either way, it fits what scientists expect if dark matter is out there shaping galaxies.
The team hopes to find more using this method, which could finally help crack some big questions about what makes up our universe.