Astronomers have identified an ultramassive black hole with a mass of approximately 36 billion times that of the Sun, located in the Cosmic Horseshoe galaxy system about 5 billion light-years from Earth. This black hole is notable for its immense size, which challenges existing theories about black hole formation and the limits of cosmological possibility. The black hole's gravitational influence is so strong that it creates a gravitational lens, bending the light of a more distant blue galaxy into an Einstein ring around its host luminous red galaxy, LRG3-757. Separately, researchers have also discovered the universe's earliest and most distant confirmed supermassive black hole, situated in the galaxy CAPERS-LRD-z9, which formed roughly 500 million years after the Big Bang and has grown to about 50 million solar masses. This early black hole's existence suggests that supermassive black holes could form rapidly in the early universe, potentially from dense cosmic seeds. These findings are prompting scientists to reconsider current models of cosmic evolution and black hole growth. Additional observations include the detection of a nearly perfect ring magnetic field around the blazar jet PKS 1424+240 and the identification of mysterious compact objects in nearby galaxies, which may further inform understanding of black hole and galaxy formation.