Largest Black Hole Measured

porkpickle tips us to a BBC article on the quasar OJ287, a binary object containing largest black hole yet discovered, weighing in at 18 billion times the mass of Sol. Researchers were able to estimate its mass due to the presence of a smaller black hole in orbit around it. When the smaller companion's orbit intersects OJ287's accretion disk, once every 12 years, it triggers a burst of radiation that was detected by the Spitzer Space Telescope. More detail and a diagram are available on the Turku University site.

Re:Need a better measurement comparison

[protolith]

Or you could say a Twinkie approximately 10^38 km long and weighing 3.5*10^37 metric tons.

Or 3.685*10^29 AU, (3.24810^24 Parsecs), 1.05*10^25 light years, room for about a billion of these in the universe!

"That's a really big Twinkie"

Re:Question about gravity

[fred fleenblat]

gravity *waves* cannot escape the event horizon, so presumably something like a starquake of the singularity cannot be detected. however, the gravitational field around the black hole is/was established before stuff falls in so as far as the rest of the universe is concerned the black hole has normal gravity. there's some weird effects like frame dragging though. check wikipedia for some explanations. IANAP.

Re:Tag as Sun!Sol

[kalirion]

It's equally silly to say The White House when there are plenty of white houses around, no?

Re:Question about gravity

[JohnFluxx]

One hypothesis of gravity is that it is an exchange of 'gravitons'. If this hypothesis is indeed correct, then it does indeed make sense to ask how these gravitons can escape a black hole. And I don't know the answer to that.

But the most commonly accepted theory is that heavy objects cause the fabric of spacetime to bend under its mass - like a heavy ball placed on rubber sheet.
With this image, it is spacetime that bends so there's no meaningful question for how gravity 'escapes' from it.

Re:no pictures

[Arthur Grumbine]

Neither of them are working for me today

"Today"?! How often do you feel the need to stare at a gaping anus?!?