WOW , thats some hole .

raduv1

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Hungriest of black holes among the most massive in the universe

Short version:
34b times the mass of the sun.

Eats about one star a day.

8000 times bigger than our own Milky Way black hole at the center.

If our Milky Way black hole wanted to get that big, it would need to eat 2/3rds of all the stars in our galaxy.

It is 34 billion times the mass of our sun and gorges on nearly the equivalent of one sun every day, according to Dr. Christopher Onken and his colleagues.

"The black hole's mass is also about 8,000 times bigger than the black hole in the centre of the Milky Way," Dr. Onken said.

"If the Milky Way's black hole wanted to grow that fat, it would have to swallow two thirds of all the stars in our Galaxy."

This giant black hole—known as J2157—was discovered by the same research team in 2018.

"We're seeing it at a time when the universe was only 1.2 billion years old, less than 10 percent of its current age," Dr. Onken said.

"It's the biggest black hole that's been weighed in this early period of the Universe."

Exactly how black holes grew so big so early in the life-span of the Universe is still a mystery, but the team is now searching for more black holes in the hope they might provide some clues.

"We knew we were onto a very massive black hole when we realised its fast growth rate," said team member Dr. Fuyan Bian, a staff astronomer at the European Southern Observatory (ESO).

"How much black holes can swallow depends on how much mass they already have.

"So, for this one to be devouring matter at such a high rate, we thought it could become a new record holder. And now we know."

The team, including researchers from the University of Arizona, used ESO's Very Large Telescope in Chile to accurately measure the black hole's mass.

"With such an enormous black hole, we're also excited to see what we can learn about the galaxy in which it's growing," Dr. Onken said.

"Is this galaxy one of the behemoths of the early Universe, or did the black hole just swallow up an extraordinary amount of its surroundings? We'll have to keep digging to figure that out."

The research is being published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Click to shrink...
No end in sight to this behemoth's appetite. This article doesn't say, but researching Google, J2157 is about 1.2 billion light years away from Earth. We have enough time.
 
No end in sight to this behemoth's appetite. This article doesn't say, but researching Google, J2157 is about 1.2 billion light years away from Earth. We have enough time.
Just remember, that's what it looked like 1.2 billion years ago. It's probably grown a lot bigger since. :rotfl:
 
Hungriest of black holes among the most massive in the universe

Short version:
34b times the mass of the sun.

Eats about one star a day.

8000 times bigger than our own Milky Way black hole at the center.

If our Milky Way black hole wanted to get that big, it would need to eat 2/3rds of all the stars in our galaxy.

No end in sight to this behemoth's appetite. This article doesn't say, but researching Google, J2157 is about 1.2 billion light years away from Earth. We have enough time.

Why do I imagine it going "Om nom nom nom."
 
Reminds me of a game my kids used to play... Dotz.io or something like that...
But as far as science goes, this is mind boggling amazing!
 
Just remember, that's what it looked like 1.2 billion years ago. It's probably grown a lot bigger since. :rotfl:
I think the article says that the black hole formed when the universe was 1.2bn years old, which would put its distance at roughly 12.5bn light years?
 
Last edited:
I think the article says that the black hole formed when the universe was 1.2bn years old, which would put it's distance at roughly 12.5bn light years?
A short trip for some of the lockdown speeders.
 
I don't know what I expected when I clicked on the thread title, but it wasn't a discussion about astronomy!
 
It kinda makes ya feel so vulnerable. Like how come we haven't had a massive asteroid crash into the Earth. But guess Space is a big place.
Yep
Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.”

― Douglas Adams, THhGttG
 
Space... Is hard.
 

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