Scientists have found the biggest black holes known to exist — each one 10 billion times the size of our sun.

    A team led by astronomers* at the University of California, Berkeley in the United States, discovered the two gigantic black holes in clusters of elliptical galaxies more than 300 million light years away. That’s relatively close on the galactic scale.

    “They are monstrous,” Berkeley astrophysicist* Ma Chung-pei told reporters. “We did not expect to find such massive black holes because they are more massive than indicated by their galaxy* properties. They’re kind of extraordinary.”

    The previous black hole record-holder is as large as 6 billion suns.

    In research released Monday by the journal Nature, the scientists suggest these black holes may be the leftovers of quasars* that crammed the early universe. They are similar in mass to young quasars, they said, and have been well hidden until now.

    The scientists used ground-based telescopes as well as the Hubble Space Telescope and Texas supercomputers, observing stars near the black holes and measuring the stellar velocities to uncover these vast, invisible regions.

    Black holes are objects so dense that nothing, not even light, can escape. Some are formed by the collapse of a super-size star. It’s uncertain how these two newly discovered whoppers* originated, said Nicholas McConnell, a Berkeley graduate student who is the study’s lead author. To be so massive now means they must have grown considerably since their formation, he said.

    Most if not all galaxies are believed to have black holes at their center. The bigger the galaxy, it seems, the bigger the black hole.

    Quasars are some of the most energized and distant of galactic centers.

    The researchers said their findings suggest differences in the way black holes grow, depending on the size of the galaxy.

    Ma speculates* these two black holes remained hidden for so long because they are living in quiet retirement.

    “For an astronomer, finding these insatiable* black holes is like finally encountering people nine feet tall whose great height had only been inferred from fossilized bones. How did they grow so large?” Ma said.

    Oxford University astrophysicist Michele Cappellari, who wrote an accompanying commentary in the journal, agreed that the two newly discovered black holes “probably represent the missing dormant relics of the giant black holes that powered the brightest quasars in the early universe.” (SD-Agencies)