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Scientists wonder if there is an upper limit on the size of black holes within or beyond the observable universe. In December 2019, astronomers announced the discovery of one of the most perfect macroscopic objects, the largest hard drive in the cosmos – the largest black hole ever measured in the near universe at the center of an elliptical galaxy in the galaxy cluster Abel 85 which is 40 billion times the mass of the sun, roughly the size of our solar system, housing two-thirds of the mass of the Milky Way’s 100 billion stars.
“Only the elements of their construction are our concepts of space and time”
Noble Prize winner Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, for whom NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory was named, described black holes, the only elements of their construction are our concepts of space and time, ”which inspired the astrophysicists to wonder about the size of these paradoxical objects, these “The gates of hell” which have no memory, but are supposed to contain the first memories of the universe, could become?
“A quantum paradox” – Black Holes, nature’s largest hard drive
Astronomers from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics and the University Observatory discovered the monster while evaluating photometric data as well as new spectral observations with the Very Large Telescope. The galaxy is Holm 15A, a huge elliptical galaxy at the center of a cluster of galaxies called Abell 85, which is made up of over 500 individual galaxies, at a distance of 700 million light years from Earth – twice the distance from the previous direct black hole mass. measurements.
“There are only a few dozen direct mass measurements of supermassive black holes, and never before has it been attempted at such a distance,” says MEP scientist Jens Thomas, who led the study. “But we already had an idea of the size of the black hole in this particular galaxy, so we gave it a try.” The team captured a snapshot of Holm’s 15A stars orbiting the galaxy’s central black hole and created a model to help them calculate the black hole’s mass.
“To imagine such a huge black hole is cool,” said Thomas, an astronomer at the Max Planck Institute for Alien Physics and one of the study’s authors.
In the distant universe, about 10 billion light years away, hides the very bright TON 618 quasar – a quasar even more massive than Holm 15A estimated to have a mass of 66 billion times that of our sun. Gargantuan black holes like TON 618 can illuminate the nature of a significant fraction of the mysterious dark matter. These “insanely large black holes” (SLAB) in galactic nuclei exist in theory and may have been seeded by primordial black holes, suggests Florian Kuhnel, chair of cosmology at the Arnold Sommerfeld Center for Theoretical Physics. This largest known black hole in the observable universe leads to even larger conjectures exist inside or beyond the observable universe, and to wonder if there is an upper limit to their sizes.
In crowded galaxy clusters, these huge elliptical galaxies like Holm 15A can collide and merge again to form an even larger elliptical galaxy. Their central black holes also combine and form larger black holes, galactic monsters that expel huge bands of nearby stars to the edges of the newly formed galaxy, leaving its weak center bare, or “hollowed out.”
The study’s authors found that Holm 15A, formed from another fusion of two already huge-core elliptical galaxies, which likely formed from the combination of eight smaller spiral galaxies over billions of years. Pairs of spiral galaxies form elliptical galaxies, pairs of such ellipticals form drowned elliptical galaxies, and one pair of drowned galaxies formed Holm 15A. This series of mergers also created the black hole at its center, a monster about as large as our solar system but with a mass of 40 billion suns.
M87’s gargantuan black hole – “Unveils the light of the entire universe”
Holm 15A is similar to the elliptical galaxy M87, the largest and most massive galaxy in the near universe, believed to have been formed by the merger of a hundred smaller galaxies. New observations from July 2018 with ESO’s Very Large Telescope revealed that the giant elliptical galaxy M87 has swallowed an entire medium-sized galaxy over the past billion years. The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) team speculated that the M87 black hole reached its massive size by merging with several other black holes.
“A galaxy has fallen through her” – Creation of the EHT’s Monster M87 black hole
. “A medium-sized galaxy has fallen through the center of M87, and due to enormous gravitational tidal forces, its stars are now scattered over an area that is 100 times larger than the original galaxy!” Ortwin Gerhard, head of the dynamics group at the Max Planck Institute for Alien Physics, said about the monster elliptical galaxy that houses the now iconic black hole the size of our solar system first photographed by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) on April 10, 2019.
The Daily Galaxy, Max Goldberg, via Arxiv.org and Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics
Image credits: Shutterstock license, top of page. Composite image Abel 85, 85.X-RAY (NASA / CXC / SAO / A.VIKHLININ ET AL.); OPTICAL (SDSS)
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