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MOSCOW, March 29 Astronomers from the University of Durham (UK) have discovered a supermassive black hole — about 33 billion times the mass of the Sun, Sky News reports.
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“This particular black hole, roughly 30 billion times the mass of the Sun, is one of the largest ever discovered. This is an upper bound on how big we think black holes can theoretically be, so it's an extremely exciting discovery,» said study lead author James Nightingale of Durham University's Department of Physics.
The results of the study were published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The authors say their work opens up the possibility for astronomers to discover even more supermassive black holes.
The study was supported by the UK Space Agency, the Royal Society, the British Council for Science and Technology and the European Research Council .
Supermassive black holes are objects several million or billion times heavier than the Sun. They are located at the center of many galaxies, including the Milky Way. Astrophysical observations show that supermassive black holes have existed in our universe almost from the very beginning — the age of the oldest of them is estimated at 13.7 billion years, while the age of the universe is 13.799 billion years. How such massive objects appeared in such a short time, scientists still cannot unequivocally explain. /ria.ru/20230222/kosmos-1853518287.html» data-title=»The key to the mystery of the Universe: an anomaly in space surprised scientists»>