Astronomers have discovered what may be the most massive black hole ever found, a cosmic behemoth weighing 36 billion times the mass of our Sun and located 5 billion light-years away in a galaxy dubbed the Cosmic Horseshoe. The discovery, published August 7 in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, pushes the boundaries of what scientists believe is possible in the universe.

The ultramassive black hole is roughly 10,000 times heavier than Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. It sits close to the theoretical upper limit for black hole size, which cosmological models suggest is around 40 to 50 billion solar masses.