Yes. A black hole is basically a normal star with normal gravity, but you can't see the gravity source itself. You can detect the motion of all other stuff arou

Yes. A black hole is basically a normal star with normal gravity, but you can't see the gravity source itself. You can detect the motion of all other stuff around it: Imagine our solar system without the sun visible, the planets will still move the same (and not get 'sucked in' or 'gobbled up' etc). Even if there is no stuff moving around the black hole, we still can detect because the intense gravity bends space and creates lensing effect, which is easily detectable with modern equipment. That said, we can infer that it is unlikely that a black hole is in our galactic vicinity and most certainly not a monster like in this article. Which, btw, is not only 12 billion light years away, also what we see is 12 billion years ago, putting the whole scene at the beginning of our universe.