Ultramassive Black Hole Discovered To Be 33 Billion Times More Massive Than the Sun (sciencealert.com) 46
Researchers have discovered one of the most massive black holes ever discovered, clocking in at around 32.7 billion times the mass of the sun. It's located in a galaxy at the center of a massive cluster named Abell 1201, some 2.7 billion light-years away. ScienceAlert reports: The new figure exceeds previous estimates by at least 7 billion solar masses, demonstrating the power of curved light for measuring masses with precision. One way we can find these black holes is looking for an effect called gravitational lensing. This occurs when space-time itself is warped by mass; imagine space-time as a rubber sheet, and the mass as a heavy weight on it. Any light traveling through that region of space-time has to travel along a curved path, and that can look very interesting to an observer watching from afar. [...]
The central galaxy, or brightest cluster galaxy (BCG) of Abell 1201, is a large, diffuse elliptical galaxy well-known as a strong gravitational lens. A galaxy far beyond the BCG appears alongside it as an elongated smear, like an eyebrow closely wrapped around its outskirts. This smear was discovered in 2003; in 2017, astronomers found a second, fainter smear, even closer to the galactic center. This implies, astronomers proposed, the presence of a very large black hole at the center of the BCG, but the data available was not detailed enough to resolve the central mass, or reveal more about what was in there.
[Researchers] not only had access to more recent observations, but devised the tools to understand them. They conducted hundreds of thousands of simulations of light moving through the Universe, altering the mass of the black hole at the galaxy's center, looking for results that replicate the lensing we observe with Abell 1021 BCG. All but one of their models preferred a massive black hole at the center of the galaxy; and the best fit for the mass of that black hole was 32.7 billion times the mass of the Sun. That pushes it well into ultramassive territory, black holes more massive than 10 billion Suns, and close to the theoretical upper limit for black hole masses of 50 billion Suns. The research has been published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
The central galaxy, or brightest cluster galaxy (BCG) of Abell 1201, is a large, diffuse elliptical galaxy well-known as a strong gravitational lens. A galaxy far beyond the BCG appears alongside it as an elongated smear, like an eyebrow closely wrapped around its outskirts. This smear was discovered in 2003; in 2017, astronomers found a second, fainter smear, even closer to the galactic center. This implies, astronomers proposed, the presence of a very large black hole at the center of the BCG, but the data available was not detailed enough to resolve the central mass, or reveal more about what was in there.
[Researchers] not only had access to more recent observations, but devised the tools to understand them. They conducted hundreds of thousands of simulations of light moving through the Universe, altering the mass of the black hole at the galaxy's center, looking for results that replicate the lensing we observe with Abell 1021 BCG. All but one of their models preferred a massive black hole at the center of the galaxy; and the best fit for the mass of that black hole was 32.7 billion times the mass of the Sun. That pushes it well into ultramassive territory, black holes more massive than 10 billion Suns, and close to the theoretical upper limit for black hole masses of 50 billion Suns. The research has been published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
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Amazingly, Slashdot no longer blocks the link!
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Amazingly, Slashdot no longer blocks the link!
They're too busy blocking the name of the company that bought Slashdot so we can't talk about it
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It was supermassive black hole, not supermassive asshole. A black hole is something where information goes to die.
In other words, we're talking about his brain, not his ass.
Re: Why on earth (Score:1)
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Well, I think the jury is still out on this one.
Upper limit? (Score:4, Interesting)
"theoretical upper limit for black hole masses of 50 billion Suns. "
What happens beyond that, the universe itself implodes?
Re: Upper limit? (Score:2)
It appears that they cause all surrounding matter to become so hot that all the matter gets blasted away from them, and no stars can form.
What I donâ(TM)t get about that explanation is why two ultra massive black holes canâ(TM)t collide.
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I don't think they really know how those UMBHs form anyway
Re: Upper limit? (Score:5, Informative)
Indeed. From 2008 in Science News:
"[B]lack holes near the size limit unplug their own feeding tubes. They do so, via means not fully understood, by heating their surroundings to a scorching temperature. This stops stars from forming anywhere nearby and blows most gas and dust far out of reach."
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/black-holes-have-limits
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If they don't understand the mechanism how can they calculate it?
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The size limit thing comes from a few papers looking at the behaviour of accretion discs. It only applies to growth through an accretion disc, so it's not really a "theoretical upper limit" although it is maybe an upper limit on the size of a black hole you'd expect to observe by the light of its accretion disc.
The idea is that outside of a certain radius, an accretion disc tends to clump up and collapse into stars. The stars don't experience the same friction that material in a disc does, so they mostly or
Re:Not so "ultra" after all (Score:5, Informative)
Measuring a black hole mass in solar masses is actually what scientists do.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re:Not so "ultra" after all (Score:5, Funny)
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What's that in giraffe masses?
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Re:Upper limit? (Score:4, Insightful)
Like Ton 618, which weighs 66.6BMs [wikipedia.org]
My eighth grade science teacher is having a meltdown about the fact that you used the word "weighs" to specify the mass of a an object in space.
Re: Upper limit? (Score:2)
But âoeweighsâ is probably etymologically consistent. What is being measured is the impact of the black holeâ(TM)s gravity, which is essentially what you do when you weigh something on earth.
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Maybe, but I've never met a single science oriented person that didn't have a meltdown about calling it "weight" instead of "mass" when speaking of objects in space.
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The noun is simple, but there isn't a commonly used English verb for "to have mass". "Weigh" isn't really correct, as that means "to have weight" not "to have mass". Using "mass" as a verb is sometimes done but sounds a bit off, as "to mass" usually means "to gather together in a mass". And "has a mass of" is a bit long-winded.
"which weighs 66.6BMs" - inaccurate
"which masses 66.6BMs" - not common usage
"which has a mass of 66.6BMs" - accurate but a bit long
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As somebody that dabbles in editing, I know that the modern trend is to find the shortest possible way to express something, but in scientific discussion, "has a mass of" will always be more accurate than saying "weighs" when it comes to discussing an object's mass.
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That said, I would advise you not to weigh this supermassive black hole on Earth. Please. Please don't do that.
Are you kidding? That black hole doesn't want to visit Earth and you can't make it! It heard it's a bad neighborhood!
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My eighth grade science teacher is having a meltdown about the fact that you used the word "weighs" to specify the mass of a an object in space.
It’s probably healthier not to deal with mass holes on the internet.
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The massive black holes at the center of most galaxies are probably very ancient, back at least to the first epoch of galaxy formation. These black holes likely have gained huge masses through gorging on incoming matter. Another mechanism that may explain some really large black holes is black hole collisions. I think the general upper limits are more for black holes that formed from stellar supernovas, since there's an upper limit on the size of stars themselves. But supernovas are only one way for a black
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The general upper limit of a mass of 50 billion suns is because beyond that limit the black hole becomes so large that it basically fling off the gaseous discs surrounding them, essentially starving themselves of any further matter.
Basically yes. More specifically it’s if we apply the known laws of physics and put them into models, by todays date the mass limit is about 50 billion suns because the faster they feed the more heat and all that heat blasts away material, stopping it from getting absorbed too quickly which slows its growth the whole time and it doesn’t have enough time to grow larger. Black holes actually grow faster as they get larger and take on a slightly different shape as the rate of change of gravity b
Re: Upper limit? (Score:2)
I also wondered about that upper limit.
My quick research indicates this is not a theoretical limit, that something happens to black holes beyond that limit, but a practical one.
Black holes take time to grow, and the universe hasn't been around long enough for any to grow past 50 billion solar masses.
https://www.newscientist.com/a... [newscientist.com]
Check back in a few billion years and that limit will be increased.
Not as ultra massive (Score:2)
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I once had an astrophysicist try to insult me by saying, "Yo mama's so fat, she emits Hawking radiation."
But the joke was on him, Hawking radiation goes down as mass increases.
OMG (Score:2)
It's Sooo BIG !!
Just had to slip that one in here.
/s
Muse about to release a remaster of their album! (Score:2)
Muse about to release a remaster of their album!
Next up... (Score:2)
SUPER ultra massive black holes.