Most Massive Black Hole Known Tips Scales at 6.6 Billion Suns

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Artist rendition

SEATTLE — Astronomers have now pinned down the weight of the most massive black hole known, a huge beast with the mass of 6.6 billion suns, a new study reports. This enormous mass is the heaviest ever measured for a black holeusing a direct technique, researchers said. The supermassive black hole is about 54 million light-years from Earth. While that seems far, it's actually the closest black hole of its weight class to our planet. Given its size, the hefty black hole — found at the heart of the elliptical galaxy M87 — is likely the best candidate for future studies to actually "see" a black hole for the first time ever.

www.space.com...

So it seems like these things just keep getting heavier and heavier, I wonder would there be a "breaking" point for them or would the weight just continue to pile up? I know other objects in the universe have their limits such as the sun and perhaps some planets? Though for a case like black holes I'm not sure, but I sure would like to know!

That looks like a nice hole.... At 54 million lightyears away I feel I will never know what its like to be inside.

You reckon its like a plug hole of the universe? Like that's where the dirty water goes? Or maybe the poo if that's what you do!!!

Bill Clinton's looking at it and saying 'yeah -huh huh huh - been there'

Originally posted by MystiqueAgent
So it seems like these things just keep getting heavier and heavier, I wonder would there be a "breaking" point for them or would the weight just continue to pile up? I know other objects in the universe have their limits such as the sun and perhaps some planets? Though for a case like black holes I'm not sure, but I sure would like to know!

Think of a black hole growth like the growth of your waistline. If you eat less calories than you burn up, your waistline gets smaller, eat more calories than you burn up, your waistline gets bigger. This analogy holds true for black holes too. They "burn up" or more correctly, dissipate matter outside the black hole via Hawking radiation. So if they aren't "feeding" or sucking any new matter in, they will shrink. If they are feeding, if it's an amount of mass greater than the mass lost through hawking radiation, they will continue to grow. I doubt there's an upper limit if there is enough material to get sucked in faster than hawking radiation is emitted.

That's definitely a whopper!

Originally posted by Arbitrageur

Originally posted by MystiqueAgent
So it seems like these things just keep getting heavier and heavier, I wonder would there be a "breaking" point for them or would the weight just continue to pile up? I know other objects in the universe have their limits such as the sun and perhaps some planets? Though for a case like black holes I'm not sure, but I sure would like to know!

Think of a black hole growth like the growth of your waistline. If you eat less calories than you burn up, your waistline gets smaller, eat more calories than you burn up, your waistline gets bigger. This analogy holds true for black holes too. They "burn up" or more correctly, dissipate matter outside the black hole via Hawking radiation. So if they aren't "feeding" or sucking any new matter in, they will shrink. If they are feeding, if it's an amount of mass greater than the mass lost through hawking radiation, they will continue to grow. I doubt there's an upper limit if there is enough material to get sucked in faster than hawking radiation is emitted.

That's definitely a whopper!

correct me if im wrong but im pretty sure hawkins radiation is about positrons and nothing to do releasing matter. nothing escapes a black hole. hawking radiation was about electrons that popped into existence near the event horizon and being sucked into the black hole but the electrons anti particle or positron being on the other side of the event horizon and escaping. someone fill me in here as im not sure.

reply to post by spearhead


This is something I've also always wondered. For example, hypothetically, if you took a "baby" black hole, and piled everything else in the universe around it, would it just suck up everything? Does it have infinite capacity to absorb energy/matter? The singularity is apparently infinitely dense also? Which is something I don't exactly understand; just because a star squeezes its mass down significantly, that means it reach a point of "infinity"?

reply to post by Raelsatu


a black hole is a tear in space and time isnt it? when something becomes so heavy and so small it just goes inside out and create another universe within itself. like an inverse bubble. the bubble can get infinitely big on the other side???

Originally posted by Arbitrageur

Originally posted by MystiqueAgent
So it seems like these things just keep getting heavier and heavier, I wonder would there be a "breaking" point for them or would the weight just continue to pile up? I know other objects in the universe have their limits such as the sun and perhaps some planets? Though for a case like black holes I'm not sure, but I sure would like to know!

Think of a black hole growth like the growth of your waistline. If you eat less calories than you burn up, your waistline gets smaller, eat more calories than you burn up, your waistline gets bigger. This analogy holds true for black holes too. They "burn up" or more correctly, dissipate matter outside the black hole via Hawking radiation. So if they aren't "feeding" or sucking any new matter in, they will shrink. If they are feeding, if it's an amount of mass greater than the mass lost through hawking radiation, they will continue to grow. I doubt there's an upper limit if there is enough material to get sucked in faster than hawking radiation is emitted.

That's definitely a whopper!

Ah yeah that much I can recall from the two astronomy courses I took. Well some of the material at least. Hmm so essentially what we have here is a hungry little black out out there in pretty much a rich environment? At least that's how I see it for it to be this big, kind of makes me wonder what else may lie around it.

reply to post by Arbitrageur

Think of a black hole growth like the growth of your waistline. If you eat less calories than you burn up, your waistline gets smaller, eat more calories than you burn up, your waistline gets bigger. This analogy holds true for black holes too. They "burn up" or more correctly, dissipate matter outside the black hole via Hawking radiation. So if they aren't "feeding" or sucking any new matter in, they will shrink. If they are feeding, if it's an amount of mass greater than the mass lost through hawking radiation, they will continue to grow. I doubt there's an upper limit if there is enough material to get sucked in faster than hawking radiation is emitted.

This would be true only in theoretical empty universe. In our real universe, cosmic microwave background radiation falling into black hole is filling the black hole faster than hawking radiation evaporating the black hole, if the black hole mass is above 0,8 % mass of the Earth.

However, since the universe contains the cosmic microwave background radiation, in order for the black hole to dissipate, it must have a temperature greater than that of the present-day black-body radiation of the universe of 2.7 K = 2.3 × 10−4 eV. This implies that M must be less than 0.8% of the mass of the Earth.

en.wikipedia.org...