A newly discovered black hole in the Cosmic Horseshoe galaxy is the most massive yet known, with a mass equivalent to 36 billion suns and located five billion light-years from Earth. This ultramassive black hole is at least 10,000 times the mass of the Milky Way's central supermassive black hole. Its mass is believed to be connected to the size of its host galaxy. Cosmic Horseshoe is classified as a 'fossil group,' indicating a galaxy cluster that has collapsed, merging smaller black holes into this massive singularity.
This is amongst the top 10 most massive black holes ever discovered, and quite possibly the most massive.
We think the size of both is intimately linked, because when galaxies grow they can funnel matter down onto the central black hole.
It is likely that all of the supermassive black holes that were originally in the companion galaxies have also now merged to form the ultramassive black hole that we have detected.
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