British astronomers have discovered one of the largest black holes ever discovered.

A team led by Durham University used gravitational lensing to find a supermassive black hole.

Gravitational lensing occurs when a celestial object has such a massive gravitational pull that it bends time and space around it, bending light from a more distant object and magnifying it.

They also used supercomputer simulations on the DiRAC integrated supercomputer facility, which allowed the researchers to study how light is bent by a black hole inside a galaxy hundreds of millions of light-years away.

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A university release says the group has simulated light traveling through the universe hundreds of thousands of times, with each simulation involving a black hole of a different mass that changes the light’s path to Earth.

By including a supermassive black hole in one of their simulations, they found that the path traveled by light from the galaxy to Earth matches what is seen in real images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.

They discovered a supermassive black hole in the foreground galaxy, an object with a mass more than 30 billion times that of the Sun.

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An astronaut aboard the Atlantis spacecraft took this image from the Hubble Space Telescope on May 19, 2009. (NASA)

Durham University said it was the first black hole discovered using gravitational lensing. Durham University astronomer Professor Alastair Edge first noticed the giant arc of the gravitational lens while looking through images of the galaxy in 2004.

“Most of the largest black holes we know of are in an active state, when matter pulled close to the black hole heats up and releases energy in the form of light, X-rays and other radiation,” says lead author Dr. This is stated in a statement by James Nightingale.

Massive galaxy cluster RX J2129 is captured in this observation by the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. Due to gravitational lensing, this observation contains three different images of the same supernova galaxy, which you can see here in more detail. Gravitational lensing occurs when a massive celestial body causes enough space-time curvature to bend the path of light passing by or through it, almost like an enormous lens. Gravitational lensing can cause background objects to appear strangely distorted, as seen in the concentric arcs of light in the upper right corner of this image. (ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, P Kelly)

“However, gravitational lensing makes it possible to study inactive black holes, which is currently not possible in distant galaxies. This approach could allow us to detect many more black holes outside of our local universe and show how these exotic objects have evolved in cosmic time.” — said the professor of the physics department.

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The results were published in a study also involving the Max Planck Institute in Germany, in a journal. Royal Astronomical Society Monthly Notices.

These days we are used to seeing very high resolution satellite imagery showing the horrific effects of extreme weather. Below I give a particularly impressive example: the before and after images of the devastation caused by the tornado are one of at least 20 during an outbreak in the south that devastated Rolling Fork, Mississippi on March 24, 2023.

But what struck me even more was the wider perspective in the image above, released by NASA. Instead of a relatively close view of homes and businesses torn to shreds, the Landsat 9 image shows a scar carved into the landscape by one of the March 24 tornadoes. The tornado trail seen in the image is just over eight miles long.

Here’s an even wider view showing the entire 29-mile tornado track:

It first landed in a wooded area near Black Hawk, Mississippi, in the lower left corner of the image. With winds reaching 155 miles per hour, it broke and uprooted trees, overturned vehicles and destroyed homes and other structures. Three people tragically died.

An even stronger tornado touched down about 70 miles to the southwest. During its almost 60-mile journey lasting over an hour, this twister winds reached at least 170 mph.

The tornado that swept through Rolling Fork left much of the tiny town in ruins, as tragically shown in high-resolution before and after satellite images.

At least 21 in Mississippi and one in Alabama lost their lives as powerful thunderstorms caused a tornado outbreak across a wide swath of the Deep South. In Sharkey County alone in western Mississippi, 13 people out of a total population of 3,700 died during the hurricanes.

Scientists have long debated the maximum possible human age, with previous research limit up to 150 years. But in the past 25 years, no one has surpassed the record for the world’s oldest person, set by Jean-Louise Calment, who died at the age of 122 in 1997.

“It has led people to claim that the maximum lifespan has been reached.” David McCarthy (will open in a new tab), assistant professor of risk management and insurance at the University of Georgia, told Live Science. In a new study, McCarthy and colleagues say they have found evidence that this longevity record will be broken within the next four decades. The team did not propose a maximum age that people could live to, but rather used a mathematical model to predict what mortality trends might look like in the coming years.