18 Billion Suns -A Galaxy Classic: Biggest Black Hole in Universe Discovered—and it’s BIG

Whatever gave birth to this monster can be real proud. The biggest black hole in the universe weighs in with a respectable mass of 18 billion Suns, and is about the size of an entire galaxy. Just like in the Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny Devito flick “Twins”, the massive black hole has a puny twin hovering nearby. By observing the orbit of the smaller black hole, astronomers are able to test Einstein's theory of general relativity with stronger gravitational fields than ever before.

The biggest black hole beats out its nearest competitor by six times. Fortunately, it’s 3.5 billion light years away, forming the heart of a quasar called OJ287. Quasars are extremely bright objects in which matter spiraling into a giant black hole emits large amounts of radiation.

The smaller black hole, which weighs about 100 million Suns, orbits the larger one on an oval-shaped path every 12 years. It comes close enough to punch through the disc of matter surrounding the larger black hole twice each orbit, causing a pair of outbursts that make OJ287 suddenly brighten.

General relativity predicts that the smaller hole's orbit itself should rotate over time, so that the point at which it comes nearest its neighbor moves around in space. This effect  is seen in Mercury's orbit around the Sun, on a much smaller scale.

In the case of OJ287, the tremendous gravitational field of the larger black hole causes the smaller black hole's orbit to precess at an impressive 39° each orbit. The precession changes where and when the smaller hole crashes through the disc surrounding its larger sibling.

About a dozen of the resulting bright outbursts have been observed to date, and astronomers led by Mauri Valtonen of Tuorla Observatory in Finland have analysed them to measure the precession rate of the smaller hole's orbit. That, along with the period of the orbit, suggests the larger black hole weighs a record 18 billion Suns.

So just how big can these bad boys get? Craig Wheeler of the University of Texas in Austin, US, says it depends only on how long a black hole has been around and how fast it has swallowed matter in order to grow. "There is no theoretical upper limit," he says.

The most recent outburst occurred on 13 September 2007, as predicted by general relativity. "If there was no orbital decay, the outburst would have been 20 days later than when it actually happened," Valtonen told New Scientist, adding that the black holes are on track to merge within 10,000 years.

Wheeler says the observations of the outbursts fit closely with the expectations from general relativity. "The fact that you can fit Einstein's theory [so well] ... is telling you that that's working," he says.

Posted by Rebecca Sato

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Links:

http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn13166-biggest-black-hole-in-the-cosmos-discovered.html
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/080109-aas-massive-black-holes.html

Comments

[The Black Hole's Son]

What a Monster!!! You have to love any article that can reference Twins!

[Okan]

this may be a dumb question i am curious though could a black hole swallow another black hole? or what does happen when one black whole gets close to another?

[Marty Ferguson]

Okan;

Check out SPACE.COM. I've seen articles that explain what happens when black holes collide. They can feasibly knock each other out of the galaxy they inhabit.

[OCCOM BILL]

What happens when two singularities meet? Really? They become a singularity, of course… and in short order. Please Google ‘white dwarf’ and ‘neutron star’ and then this will all make sense to you. Really.

[john]

Marty, really? Really.

[john]

Marty, really? Really.

[Qev]

"...about the size of an entire galaxy." is a bit of hyperbole, I think. It'd still be rather large, though, roughly 10 times the size of Pluto's orbit around the Sun.

[jon]

google sky??

[Brando]

It is misleading to say it is the size of an entire galaxy, it is the mass of an entire galaxy, the article's wording suggests the black hole itself is as large in diameter as a galaxy and that is not true. We can infer that the circumference of the large black hole cannot be more than 12 light years, otherwise the smaller black hole could not orbit it at the rate stated in the article.

[Joshsou]

If it's 3.5 billion light years away, and they are set to merge in 10,000 years, they would have already merged 3,499,990,000 years ago? Or are they calculating that it will actually happen 10,000 years from now (Meaning they took the 3.5 billion light years it took the light to reach us into account).

[Brent]

To say that a black hole has a diameter is a bit contradictory as well, isn't it? A black hole is a singularity, where matter has been compressed so much that its 'dropped out' of the universe. So theoretically, wouldn't the diameter be less than that of a single atom?

[Donkel]

I think it's safe to say we can start shipping our trash into outer space. lol

[Tomas]

@Joshsou
The size of a black hole is usually determind by its event horizon.

I am not sure if a singularity actually has a size at all...

[LYNXUS]

Surely all this happened ages ago and currently out there somewhere is that massive blackhole and its bigger than we think? Surely the blackhole merged 10,000 years ago? and the light is still 10,000 years away?
I dunno. maybe im being stupid.

[Scott Houdek]

Wow!, that is almost PHYSICALLY impossible to detect that great distance and find something enormousally monster of a black hole!!!!!
in the GREAT Universe future, I think black holes will start to SWOLLOW in the entire universe!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
after all the Universe has it's own garbage containers!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
"PLEASE RECYCLE!!!!!!!!!"

[Youma]

You've missread the original article dude, there's not nearly enough matter in the universe for a black hole the size of a galaxy.. It actually has the WEIGHT of a galaxy, the size is that of a small moon.

[Guest]

That no moon, Thats a space station!

[Guest]

That no moon, Thats a space station!

[David]

Only 18 billion huh? I've seen bigger...

[Brian]

Just to toss out there some info, 18 billion solar masses would lead to a black hole with a approx radius of 32.9 billion miles. It would take light approx 49 hours to travel from the edge to the center of the event horizon to its center if it were flat compared to 8 minutes from our sun to the earth. Its not the size of a galaxy, as the milky way is approx 100,000 light years across, but an object that is even 98 light hours across is hard to imagine. To put that in perspective, if you take the distance from the Earth to the Sun (93 million miles), and multiply it by 735 times, you will get the diameter of this black hole.

[Tom E]

Have they tried measuring to see if there is any hawking radiation / what entropy it has?

[matt in nm]

This occurred 3.5 billion years ago. I wonder how large it is or if it still exist? Until we exceed light speed we are forced to live in the past.

[knoxvilledaniel]

In what ways would a large black be different ? Would its mass be denser than a smaller black hole, or would the mass be uniform, or would it vary from one black hole to another ? We can really only conjecture, because we haven't the means to inspect one up close yet, nor will we for a few centuries at least. Computer models aren't as good as the real thing.

[knoxvilledaniel]

& I share Okan's curiousity. It would be interesting to know EXACTLY what happened if & when 2 singularities like those in OJ287 collided, but we can only conjecture about it & build computer models of it. It's gonna be a LONG wait.....

[matt]

I don't get how 2 singularities could be said to collide exactly.

Given the curvature of space/time within the two event horizons, would not the smaller singularity of the two eventually come to rest at some point on the rim of the larger's event horizon forming sort of a lobe sticking out? In normal matter the gravity would smooth it all out but time doesn't really flow beyond the event horizon, or if it does smooth out this would indicate that time does flow in black holes?

or would tidal forces somehow still apply (to a singularity which has no volume to stretch!?) and rip the smaller apart expressing it's mass as energy with some portion of it falling into the larger's event horizon and some other portion being emitted into the cosmos.

My guess is the whole thing would find the math rather difficult and elect simply to explode.

[DarkHorizonsOfBlackClouds]

The "hawkings" ejections blow the theory of black holes sucking everything including light into itself away.

How about the "event horizon" as the limits of the carbon clouds surrounding a large object. Everything that goes in, burns up and eventually the carbon clouds grow into what we think of as a black hole. Just as the sun gets dimmer when a forest fire is nearby, so goes a black hole.

How fast is this second black hole traveling around this other larger one?

[GravityWave]

OJ287, as they call it, must necessarily be a constant source of gravitational wave as two Black Holes are revolving around each other. Has a gravity wave from this object been detected.

[Dr Phil]

Holy Emperor! They found the eye of terror!!!!!

[Rip]

That's an artist's impression you morons.

[sfanetti]

When the 2 collided they triggered a gamma ray burst - which we will see some time in the next 10,000 years. Hopefully we are all dead when that happens cause we are on axis with their orbits and a ultra tight jet of gamma rays could cause havoc with life on earth.

[sfanetti]

When the 2 collided they triggered a gamma ray burst - which we will see some time in the next 10,000 years. Hopefully we are all dead when that happens cause we are on axis with their orbits and a ultra tight jet of gamma rays could cause havoc with life on earth.

[axmukher]

The black holes are 3.5 billion light years away, so what we are observing is as old as that. They were to merge in 10K years, which means that at this point of time they have long merged.