Monster Black Holes 10 Billion Times Greater Than The Sun

| May 28, 2016 | Cool Science Facts, Featured Stories | No Comments

MessageToEagle.com – We know that the Universe is home to extreme forces and many unbelievable objects.

Yet, despite the enormous distances in space and the incredibly huge stars, planets and other stellar objects, one never ceases to be amazed by new discoveries.

Just imagine monster black holes which have a mass about 10 billion times greater than the Sun!

Black hole
An illustration of a black hole the size of nearly 10 billion Suns. Inside it, where gravity is so in- tense that not even light can escape, our solar system is shown to scale. Illustration by Pete Marenfeld/National Optical Astronomy Observatory

Such black holes are 10 times the size of our solar system and could easily swallow billions of Suns. These are incredible objects! It cannot be denied.
Two such giant black holes are located in the heart of a pair of galaxies several hundred million light years from Earth.
One of them is in NGC 3842, the brightest of a cluster of galaxies about 320 million light years from Earth.

The second hole is of “comparable or greater mass” and is located in NGC 4889, the brightest galaxy in the Coma cluster, about 335 million light years away.

What can we learn from such discoveries?

Monster black hole
NASA has obtained its best ever images of a supermassive black hole and the mysterious ring that feeds the galactic gobbler. This close-up view taken by the NASA Hubble Space Telescope shows Galaxy NGC 1068 at the doughnut disk of gas and dust surrounding it in the clearest form yet.

These kind of findings could shed light on the role these black holes play in the formation and evolution of galaxies.

See also:

Precise Mass Of A Giant Black Hole Measured For The First Time

Super Aliens May Already Live Inside Supermassive Black Holes

Super Massive Black Holes Lurking In The Hearts Of Galaxies

The previous record-holder was in the galaxy M87, a member of the Virgo cluster some 54 million light-years from here, where a black hole weighed in at a mere 6.3 billion solar masses. The new black holes, however, were even larger than astronomers had predicted based on the earlier measurements, suggesting that there is something special about how the most massive galaxies are built.

Cool Science Facts: Monster Black Holes 10 Billion Times Greater Than The Sun

“Measurements of these massive black holes will help us understand how their host galaxies were assembled, and how the holes achieved such monstrous mass,” Mr. McConnell, at the University of California, Berkeley said.

Astronomers have long supposed that since the universe began it has harboured black holes with a mass the size of the two newly found giants and now, researchers’ suspicions are slowly being confirmed.

First version of this article was originally published on April 23, 2012

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