Scientists say they have discovered a black hole so big that it challenges the theory about how they grow.
The scientists were initially reluctant to classify it as a black hole because it was too bright, its luminosity equal to the brightness of 420 trillion suns. Most of the people do not believe black holes to be bright, though they can be. This is particularly so because black holes suck everything inside them but just before that there is tremendous friction which produces a lot of light.
Scientists said this black hole was formed about 900 million years after the Big Bang.
But with measurements indicating it is 12 billion times the size of the Sun, the black hole challenges a widely accepted hypothesis of growth rates.
"Based on previous research, this is the largest black hole found for that period of time," Dr Fuyan Bian, Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Australian National University (ANU).
"Current theory is for a limit to how fast a black hole can grow, but this black hole is too large for that theory."
The creation of supermassive black holes remains an open topic of research. However, many scientists have long believed the growth rate of black holes was limited.
Black holes grow, scientific theory suggests, as they absorb mass. However, as mass is absorbed, it will be heated creating radiation pressure, which pushes the mass away from the black hole.
"Basically, you have two forces balanced together which sets up a limit for growth, which is much smaller than what we found," said Bian.
The black hole was discovered a team of global scientists led by Xue-Bing Wu at Peking University, China, as part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, which provided imagery data of 35 percent of the northern hemisphere sky.
The ANU is leading a comparable project, known as SkyMapper, to carry out observations of the Southern Hemisphere sky.
Bian expects more black holes to be observed as the project advances.
Source : Reuters , ScienceTimes
Is the "size" of a black hole its dimensions or its mass?
ReplyDeleteits mass,
ReplyDeleteand it is about 3,000 times larger than our galaxy's supermassive black hole :)
That's one hell of a massive black hole. I'd hate to have him for a neighbor.
ReplyDeleteTotally awesome image. Don't think I had any clue what a black hole looked like.
ReplyDeleteAmazing. Just amazing. I LOVE SCIENCE!!!
ReplyDeleteIt really looks like the sort of thing they'd put in a science fiction movie and be blasted for doing something unreasonable and unrealistic, doesn't it?
ReplyDeleteThank you for stopping by my blog.
ReplyDeleteReblogged this on Opher's World and commented:
ReplyDeletePuts things in perspective. I wonder how the creationists and ISIS handle information like this. The time scale and size is too enormous to contemplate. Puts human life in perspective!