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 have identified an ultramassive black hole that could be the largest ever measured, hidden in a distant galaxy known as the Cosmic Horseshoe. This gargantuan object, weighing about 36 billion Suns, warps space so strongly that light from a background galaxy is bent into a perfect Einstein ring.

Theoretically, there's no limit to how massive a black hole could grow. In practical terms, other constraints, such as the growth rate, suggest that the maximum mass a black hole could achieve within the current 13.8-billion-year lifespan of the Universe is about 50 billion solar masses.