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,

About 5 billion light-years away from where you're sitting, in one of the most massive galaxies on record, there exists an astonishing black hole. It was only just measured by scientists who managed to peer through the fabric of warped space-time — and it appears to hold a mass equivalent to that of 36 billion suns.

An international team of astronomers led by The University of Texas at Austin's Cosmic Frontier Center has confirmed the most distant black hole ever detected.