Largest (so far) Black Hole found

[n2doc]

Black hole is most massive known
New measure could help solve puzzle on galaxy development


By Andrea Thompson

updated 4:32 p.m. ET, Mon., June 8, 2009
PASADENA, Calif. - The most massive black hole yet weighed lurks at the heart of the relatively nearby giant galaxy M87.

The supermassive black hole is two to three times heftier than previously thought, a new model showed, weighing in at a whopping 6.4 billion times the mass of the sun. The new measure suggests that other black holes in nearby large galaxies could also be much heftier than current measurements suggest, and it could help astronomers solve a longstanding puzzle about galaxy development.

"We did not expect it at all," said team member Karl Gebhardt of the University of Texas at Austin.

The discovery was announced Monday at the 214th meeting of the American Astronomical Society.

The finding "is important for how black holes relate to galaxies," said team member Jens Thomas of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany. "If you change the mass of the black hole, you change how the black hole relates to the galaxy."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31173519/

[Tansy_Gold]

1. Is it in Harry Reid's office, or Nancy Pelosi's?

[Cronus Protagonist]

2. It's in Clarence Thomas's office

And it increases in mass around lunch time every day.

[tridim]

3. I still don't understand how they can measure this..

While NOT knowing yet how to measure or even observe dark matter.

I'd bet everything that super-massive black holes are directly related to dark matter, with regular matter wedged inbetween.

[On the Road]

4. They Keep Finding These Super-Massive Black Holes

Does anyone know how much of the universe's matter is thought to be tied up in black holes? It must be a lot.

[tridim]

5. I thought black holes were neutral?

As in they suck in matter and convert it into energy that is eventually released as Hawking radiation.

Of course as a Science Channel layman I could be completely wrong. :)

[PetrusMonsFormicarum]

6. Little more with every passing moment.

Supermassive black hole? Okay, A LOT more.

[SurfingScientist]

7. Surprisingly little.

There is a well-established relation between a galaxy's mass in its stars and the mass of its central, supermassive black hole.

The ratio is of the order 1/1000 - the BH is on average 1000 times less massive than all the galaxy's stars taken together.

Since virtually all stars in the Universe live in galaxies, this means the mass in supermassive BHs in the Univese is about 1/1000 of the mass of stars in the Universe.

Given that stars make about 0.5% of the total mass in the Universe (ordinary matter, dark matter, dark energy), that means supermassive BHs make about 0.0005% of everything in the Universe.


Note: this does not include "normal mass" black holes that are the corpses of former stars (and have a mass similar to a star) and should float around in abundance with the living stars in a galaxy. These make probably another few % of the total mass in stars in the Universe (i.e. again a tiny fraction of _all_ the mass in the Universe).

[On the Road]

8. Thank You -- That is a Surprise

is most of the rest dark matter?

[Taitertots]

9. Dark matter could be unseen black holes

If they are going to have to start increasing the estimated mass of black holes by two to three times than it might explain the effects attributed to dark matter.