A black hole with a mass equivalent to 36 billion suns-10,000 times heavier than the one at the center of the Milky Way -has been discovered around 5 billion light-years from Earth. It may be the largest ever identified.

Astronomers using the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) and the Very Large Array (VLA) have caught a supermassive black hole in the act of awakening from a long slumber, providing an unprecedented glimpse into the earliest stages of black hole activity.

Astronomers have identified a 36-billion-solar-mass black hole in the distant Cosmic Horseshoe galaxy, using a new technique to measure it.