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afrothunder1987 t1_je5tkye wrote

For reference, Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way is 4.3 million times the mass of the sun.

https://beta.nsf.gov/news/astronomers-confront-massive-black-hole-heart

At 30 billion times the mass of the sun this thing is….. big

Ultra massive black holes like this present a problem for science. Accretion disks can only become so hot, dense, and energetic around black holes before they radiate so much energy that they keep themselves from falling into a black hole above a certain rate. There is effectively a limit to how fast black holes can grow.

These super/ultra massive black holes are bigger than it should be possible for them to be, even if they experienced max growth rate constantly from the birth of the universe.

So how did they get that big?

A cool theory is that when the universe was young, dense, and hot, enormous stars formed that were so massive their cores compressed into black holes. And because these black holes are surrounded by a star which is constantly crushing matter into it, the black holes basically get force fed. The accretion disk energy is overwhelmed by the crushing pressure from the gigantic Star.

It’s a fun theory.

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Anticode t1_je6m7ry wrote

> A cool theory is that when the universe was young, dense, and hot, enormous stars formed that were so massive their cores compressed into black holes.

Sounds a lot like my teenage years.

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WrongAspects t1_je6ys2r wrote

Our Galaxy has a hundred billion stars in it. This black hole has 30 billion

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timberwolf0122 t1_je7yujk wrote

It’s a hundred thousand light years wide Bulging in the middle 16 thousand light years thick But by us it’s just 3 thousand light years wide

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linkdude212 t1_je8x3cd wrote

For other readers, these are dimensions of our galactic disk, not the black hole.

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DirtyProtest t1_je99rg6 wrote

We're thirty thousand light years from galactic central point,

We go round every two hundred milion years,

And our galaxy is only one millions of billions in this amazing and expanding universe.

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B4SSF4C3 t1_je73x37 wrote

>At 30 billion times the mass of the Sun this thing is… big

Not big at all, actually. But it IS massive ;)

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FrickinLazerBeams t1_je7ebb4 wrote

A 30 billion solar mass black hole has a diameter of nearly 600 times that of earths orbit around the sun. That's pretty big.

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B4SSF4C3 t1_je7hqy2 wrote

You are referencing event horizon, not the singularity. But I suppose I’ll agree that if considering the overall black hole phenomena, the event horizon would be a more logical “edge” to reference.

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Aeseld t1_je840it wrote

"What actually transpires beneath the veil of an event horizon? Decent people shouldn't think too much about that."

Academician Prokhor Zakharov, "For I Have Tasted The Fruit"

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linkdude212 t1_je8xi6w wrote

I see you're studying for your degree in pedantry. A black hole is it's event horizon and everything inside it.

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igloofu t1_je7rgrr wrote

Could these ultra-massive black holes be the source of the extra unseen mass in the universe that is attributed to dark matter?

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afrothunder1987 t1_je83nwh wrote

Thats a theory yes! They may me much more common than previously thought and account for the effect described by dark matter.

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endlessupending t1_je70u3m wrote

So if you combine a few of these primordials in a merger you could get something like this one?

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N8CCRG t1_je7gl29 wrote

The challenge is that in order to get 30 billion times more massive than the sun requires a whole lot more than "a few". It requires tens of thousands to millions of mergers of already supersized black holes. I doubt anyone would say impossible, but it's definitely worth considering other explanations as well.

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endlessupending t1_je81374 wrote

I mean it’s like mass of 1/3 of stars in the Milky Way assuming each is 1 sol. When you got all these big bois in a small room it’s gonna be like a clash of the titans. It’s not inconceivable that the early universe could accommodate that mergerpalooza scenario.perhaps some shot off and became the galactic cores of most galaxies.

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afrothunder1987 t1_je71qja wrote

Well this is all theory but possibly! Could be that two galaxies with overly large black holes merged and the black holes combined. Or maybe the star that force fed this particular black hole was just way larger than normal.

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endlessupending t1_je72t2e wrote

Something tells me primordial mergers if a real thing were more common than supermassive mergers based on the relatively smaller size of the early universe. I have no data to back that up though.

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iborobotosis23 t1_je7c6zm wrote

Please stop saying theory. I don't think you're using it the way it should be in a scientific context.

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honeybadger9 t1_je7kh2e wrote

Should stop gate keeping science. A theory is an idea based on a general understanding of something. If this and this happens at this scale, then it's possible for this to happen at a larger or smaller scale.

A theory is just an idea that could be possible but hasn't been proven yet.

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iborobotosis23 t1_je7lqj8 wrote

You know what? You're right. I just read up the definition here (link). I think it states that theories a bit more defined than what you're saying but I was probably conflating theory and empirical law.

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DarkStarStorm t1_je7dmme wrote

Give them a replacement word, then.

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iborobotosis23 t1_je7kwk7 wrote

I'll give you a few (link).

"But", you'll say, "I see the word theory right there!" You're quite right it is in there. But that is not the context in which the word should be used when discussing scientific topics. When using theory in a scientific discussion it's meant to convey the most certain scientists can be on a statement. This is not true based of a little more reading on theories and laws. Oopsie, my bad!

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korinth86 t1_je7evbt wrote

Quasars are basically constantly on the verge of exploding and imploding at the same time.

Boggles the mind.

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KetosisMD t1_je53298 wrote

> mass of 30 billion suns

That’s a lot IMO.

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MethosofGondor t1_je5xl2v wrote

But how many elephants is that?

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TheDolphinGod t1_je60yet wrote

Well, assuming an elephant weight of 10,000lb, the sun weighs approximately 4.385 septillion elephants. This black hole then would equal the mass of 1.3155x10^37 elephants, or 13,155,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, AKA 13.155 Undecillion elephants.

Hope this helps.

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wp998906 t1_je6renj wrote

What about bananas, our standard unit of measurement in the tech world.

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discostud1515 t1_je6ybc9 wrote

I’m gonna need to know it in either football fields or Olympic swimming pools.

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TomSurman t1_je6mqsc wrote

Still not the biggest black hole we know of. That would be Ton 618, weighing in at 66 billion suns. 30 billion is still ridiculously huge though. There are galaxies with less mass than that.

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ArcherBTW t1_je6pexw wrote

I’m pretty sure we found a bigger one not too long ago

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TomSurman t1_je72ctx wrote

Wikipedia lists two bigger ones, but says the data is unreliable. Their estimated masses are greater than the theoretical maximum a black hole should have been able to reach in a universe this young.

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DoyoureadmeHAL t1_je5hrt3 wrote

So it says “mass” of the sun but then they mention “something that large” implying size. I’m a dummy but those are two different things right. It could be the size of a baseball and be 30 billion times the mass of the sun. No?

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zoinkability t1_je5powt wrote

There is a direct relationship between the mass of a black hole and the size of its event horizon. if you know the one, you know the other. So if a black hole is the highest mass ever seen, it would also be the largest in terms of its event horizon.

That said, inside the event horizon we simply can't know what goes on. So the "actual size" (meaning, how much space the matter inside the black hole occupies) is, I believe, simply unknown.

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xEman26x t1_je6rax2 wrote

I just learned this today, funny seeing it again.

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SpererZero t1_je5pjqj wrote

It's mass directly as effects it's size, remember, it's not the physical object that's big, but rather the schwarchchild radius, where light can no longer escape.

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_huppenzuppen t1_je71n6a wrote

*its, *affects, *its, *Schwarzschild

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SpererZero t1_je7d3ty wrote

Spelling is hard smart ass. And for your information, 3 of those 4 misspells were autocorrect's fault.

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a8bmiles t1_je7fy0k wrote

Ignorance is easy though. Just do nothing at all to better yourself.

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SpererZero t1_je7gh63 wrote

Put it this way, tho typing a little slower would allow me to better spell words, you still got the information that I put forward. Why in that situation should I improve if I would just be accomplishing the same task but slower? Edit: in that case, is it even an improvement?

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a8bmiles t1_je7gp18 wrote

"Auotkrekt mayde me sownde dumbber" is what I'm hearing.

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SpererZero t1_je7h2t6 wrote

Joke, and no, it was absolutely my fault. Just saying, if the message was conveyed...right? Maybe I am dumb but my goal wasn't to sound smart, it was to convey a message, which I did.

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Putrid-Repeat t1_je6ash5 wrote

Just to add, I used an online calculator and the radius is 177 billion kilometers in diameter or 255 thousand earth's in diameter.

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WormRabbit t1_je6l1oq wrote

About 1000 AU. For comparison, the distance from Sun to Pluto is 39 AU, and the Oort cloud spans from 2000 to 100 000 AU.

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zubbs99 t1_je8m38s wrote

An event horizon that wide is mildly terrifying.

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B4SSF4C3 t1_je74lnf wrote

Right, size has no meaning we can relate to. Space time collapsed to a singularity. They very much mean mass.

Although now that I think about it, not sure if mass has meaning either at that point? Is it “mass equivalent” effect on surrounding space time?

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FrickinLazerBeams t1_je7epth wrote

No. Black holes have a size. A black hole with 30 billion solar masses has a radius of a little less than 600 AU (Astronomical Units, the average distance from the earth to the sun).

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Wagamaga OP t1_je4xswa wrote

A team of British researchers has made an exciting discovery in the great inky black of space: a gigantic black hole is roughly 30 billion times the mass of our Sun.

Something that large is almost unfathomable to the brain of the Average Joe, but thankfully space boffins at Durham University have been busily studying the cosmos and all the secrets she keeps hidden from us.

The findings, described by the research team as 'extremely exciting' have been published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Durham University Astronomer James Nightingale and lead author of the study said: "This particular black hole is roughly 30 billion times the mass of our Sun.

https://www.unilad.com/news/scientists-discover-one-of-the-biggest-black-holes-ever-291846-20230329

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amitym t1_je6yb8t wrote

Based on a random internet Schwarzchild Radius calculator, at 30Bn times Solar mass, that would put the event horizon at an equivalent distance of about 15 times further than Pluto. Anyone in orbit just above the event horizon would move at about 6km / s, roughly comparable to low Earth orbital velocity, and would be subject to only 50 gees -- hard to escape from but not impossible, also not nearly enough to cause "spaghettification," or appreciable time dilation either.

Aside from being fried by the hard radiation pouring out from right under you, sounds quite livable! You'd never have to worry about getting too cold, anyway.

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Muvlon t1_je7f7cf wrote

> Anyone in orbit just above the event horizon would move at about 6km / s, roughly comparable to low Earth orbital velocity, and would be subject to only 50 gees

Wait, what? Wouldn't they be subject to 0 gees, seeing as they're in orbit, i.e. experiencing no acceleration?

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amitym t1_je7mice wrote

Yes, practically speaking, but under a steep enough gravitational gradient you can no longer ignore the difference between, for example, the gravity acting on your head versus your feet. Or one end of a structure versus another. That's what causes "spaghettification" for example.

However in this case the gravitational gradient is still pretty shallow, as far as I can tell.

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Plan-B-Rip-and-Tear t1_je7p075 wrote

Astronauts in low earth orbit still feel like they are falling the whole time. Orbit means your velocity perpendicular to the action of gravity matches the rate you would be falling otherwise, resulting in you following a circular path/orbit around the object.

Same principle the vomit comet plane uses, except parallel to earths gravity instead of perpendicular. The plane loses altitude at the same rate you would fall due to gravity, so inside the cabin it’s as if you are weightless. But you feel the acceleration the whole time.

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amitym t1_je89s60 wrote

It doesn't have to do with inertia. Astronauts orbiting Earth feel like they're falling, instead of feeling like they're being extruded into a thin bloody dribble, because the pull of gravity is effectively the same at their feet as it is at their heads.

That's not the case when very close outside the Schwarzchild radius of smaller black holes. But at 30 billion solar masses, the Schwarzchild radius is so far out from the singularity that the gravitational gradient is, as around Earth, negligible.

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Plan-B-Rip-and-Tear t1_je8cb19 wrote

I really should have responded to the poster you were responding to rather than you as that’s the question I intended to address about feeling 0 g’s, not gravitational gradients on intermediate and stellar sized black holes.

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Muvlon t1_je90mb6 wrote

Right, but those are tidal forces, and how much of those you experience depends not only on what your orbit looks like but also on how big you are (and how you're oriented). So I'm not sure how you arrived at the 50G number, there must be some hidden assumptions.

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amitym t1_jea7h3g wrote

It's the gravitational acceleration at that distance from a body of that mass, at least based on the random internet calculator I used. (~500 m/s^(2))

Under that kind of gravity, it doesn't really matter how big you are or what your orientation is. The gradient isn't going to be enough to spaghettify you. It might matter if you want to build a large structure in close orbit around the black hole, but even then, a reasonably sized, properly engineered steel-reinforced structure should be able to handle that level of stress.

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Muvlon t1_jebecrf wrote

Ah, so it's the gravitation acceleration for a still standing obverser, not an infalling one or one that is in orbit.

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coffeecofeecoffee t1_je72gpf wrote

Maybe I don't understand but shouldnt the escape velocity at the event horizon be the speed of light?

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FrickinLazerBeams t1_je7ez4s wrote

Yes. He made some kind of math error on that point. Everything else he said is correct though.

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amitym t1_jea8msl wrote

Yes, and it will of course be slightly less than that in an orbit just outside the event horizon.

But escape velocity isn't the same as local orbital velocity, right? Escape velocity is the speed you have to start out at if you want to coast the rest of the way and still escape the orbit of your primary. Your orbital velocity in your local frame of reference should be much less than the speed of light in this case.

So you should be able to exit your secret black hole lair through gradual velocity changes, from continuous acceleration or other means. The reason I mention that is that it seems technologically somewhat more feasible than stipulating, "okay well first off, you start by going at the speed of light...."

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VoDoka t1_je5xau3 wrote

Yea, I like can't even imagine the size of the sun to begin with...

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hellhoundtheone t1_je63tyu wrote

you have to wach many Dokus to get the meassures that are behind Our universe. the more you learn about it the more you get a feeling how big things out there. but its still Hard to get a feeling for it

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linkdude212 t1_je8y7hu wrote

The Sun is bigger to you than you are to a single atom.

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magicbaconmachine t1_je51oia wrote

Are these maybe common since we are just starting to have technology to detect them. Are we possibly surrounded by these massive beats?

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hellhoundtheone t1_je63dom wrote

i dont know if we are surrounded by 30 billions the Sun Black holes. but we Are definitiv surrounded by Black holes they are every where.

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Sethger t1_je769c1 wrote

There is at least one in the center of a galaxy

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desepticon t1_je6bc8v wrote

Is it at the center of a dense cluster or just some random galaxy?

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kingp43x t1_je7hxiz wrote

our friend here has been on a little break it seems, still killer numbers tho!

Wagamaga

10,487,397 post karma

270,421 comment karma

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AioliFantastic4105 t1_je8qjbt wrote

A theory among ancient astronaut theorists is these black holes are giant alien garbage disposals

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eatabean t1_je8w9w0 wrote

The abstract says "outside the local universe..." What is considered to be the boundary of the local universe?

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beatvox t1_je7473m wrote

since lensing can cause field of view to be enlarged, could it be smaller than initial estimates?

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Brooklington t1_jee3lxg wrote

The technique used to detect the black hole in this case is to use a model to predict what the image would look like with and without the black hole. The model that fits the data best is consistent with a black hole of the size quoted.

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nich3play3r t1_je6z0s7 wrote

To me, the most amazing thing about this discovery is contemplating why God ever created such a thing in the first place.

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EchoedTruth t1_je72emn wrote

I think on a scale of what we know of the cosmos... "God" is beyond comprehension.

​

If it is a sentient being it exists beyond our dimension and to have any affect on this universe would have to be absolutely massive on the scale of multiple universes.

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phixerz t1_je70hzx wrote

true dude, god is amazing, really.

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