What is the most distant black hole ever detected?
The most distant black hole in this catalog is GW190403_051519, about 27.0 billion ly away: a merger detected not by light but by the ripple it sent through spacetime, which took billions of years to reach Earth. Everything about GW190403_051519 →
| # | Black hole | Distance | Mass |
|---|---|---|---|
| ★ 1 | GW190403_051519 | 27.0 billion ly | 102 suns |
| 2 | GW230704_212616 | 23.8 billion ly | 132 suns |
| 3 | GW200308_173609 | 23.2 billion ly | 88.0 suns |
| 4 | GW241201_055758 | 23.2 billion ly | 76.0 suns |
| 5 | GW240621_214041 | 22.2 billion ly | 73.0 suns |
| 6 | GW241229_155844 | 22.2 billion ly | 82.0 suns |
| 7 | GW231119_075248 | 21.9 billion ly | 79.0 suns |
| 8 | GW230922_040658 | 21.2 billion ly | 119 suns |
| 9 | GW240527_183429 | 20.9 billion ly | 80.0 suns |
| 10 | GW231005_021030 | 20.5 billion ly | 127 suns |
| 11 | GW240612_081540 | 20.2 billion ly | 88.0 suns |
| 12 | GW190805_211137 | 20.0 billion ly | 72.4 suns |
| 13 | GW200220_061928 | 19.6 billion ly | 141 suns |
| 14 | GW240107_013215 | 18.9 billion ly | 87.0 suns |
| 15 | GW250118_023225 | 18.9 billion ly | 71.0 suns |
| 16 | GW231230_170116 | 18.6 billion ly | 86.0 suns |
| 17 | GW241116_151753 | 18.6 billion ly | 95.0 suns |
| 18 | GW241009_022835 | 18.3 billion ly | 61.0 suns |
| 19 | GW230806_204041 | 17.9 billion ly | 82.0 suns |
| 20 | GW240618_071627 | 17.9 billion ly | 101 suns |
| 21 | GW230630_125806 | 17.6 billion ly | 80.0 suns |
| 22 | GW240824_205609 | 17.3 billion ly | 103 suns |
| 23 | GW231113_150041 | 17.0 billion ly | 82.0 suns |
| 24 | GW250116_015318 | 17.0 billion ly | 53.0 suns |
| 25 | GW240601_061200 | 16.6 billion ly | 82.0 suns |
Showing the top 25 of 291 that qualify.
Nothing at the top of this table was seen. A pair of black holes spiralling together stretches and squeezes space itself, and detectors in the United States, Italy and Japan measure that stretching as a change in the length of a four-kilometre laser arm smaller than a proton. The signal's shape encodes both the masses and the distance, which is how an event billions of light-years away can be characterised without a single photon.
The distances here are luminosity distances, the standard measure for these events, and they carry wide uncertainties: the further away a merger is, the fainter and briefer its signal, so the error bars grow with the number. They also describe how far the light-equivalent signal travelled, which for the most distant events is a substantial fraction of the age of the universe.
What is the most distant black hole ever detected?
The most distant black hole in this catalog is GW190403_051519, about 27.0 billion ly away: a merger detected not by light but by the ripple it sent through spacetime, which took billions of years to reach Earth.
How can a black hole be detected billions of light-years away?
By gravitational waves. When two black holes merge, they radiate more power for a fraction of a second than all the stars in the observable universe combined, in the form of ripples in spacetime. Detectors on Earth measure that ripple directly, which is why distance is far less of an obstacle than it is for telescopes.
How far away is the most distant one?
About 27.0 billion ly, for GW190403_051519. The merger happened long before the Earth existed, and the signal has been travelling ever since.
Why are the most distant black holes all mergers?
Because a merger is the only black-hole event loud enough to detect at that range. Ordinary black holes are found by light from the material around them, which fades with distance the way all light does; a gravitational-wave signal fades far more slowly.
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