By Alex WilkinsA gargantuan black hole hiding in a galaxy 5 billion years away is the most massive that has been directly measured, more than 10,000 times as massive as the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way,

Scientists have tapped into gravitational lensing and stellar dynamics to confirm the existence of a black hole with 36 billion solar masses.

Astronomers have identified the most distant—and by extension earliest—black hole ever seen. Located in the galaxy CAPERS-LRD-z9, the supermassive black hole likely formed 13.3 billion years ago, barely 500 million years after the big bang.