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At the center of the Milky Way is the largest object we can be sure of: a supermassive black hole (SMBH) four million times more massive than the sun.
Physicists believe these enormous singularities can grow to even larger sizes if they have eaten up a galaxy large enough. The highest estimates are in a range 10 billion times more massive than our sun, but things start to accelerate soon after. At least, that’s conventional wisdom.
A new study by a trio of European researchers recently unveiled a larger theory involving the formation of black holes. They say that under the right conditions, black holes could become so massive that the only way to describe their size would be unbelievably tall.
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Nicknamed SLAB (insanely large black holes), these hypothetical cosmic entities could be incredibly larger than their skinny supermassive counterparts due to their totally different makeup.
Where SMBHs become large by devouring dying stars and / or merging with other black holes, SLABs are considered primordial and therefore would predate the formation of stars and galaxies.
By university press release:
Since “ primordial ” black holes do not form from a collapsing star, they could have a wide range of masses, including very small and incredibly large.
[Project lead] Professor Bernard Carr said: “We already know that black holes exist over a wide range of masses, with an SMBH of four million solar masses residing at the center of our own galaxy. While there is currently no evidence for the existence of SLAB, it is conceivable that they could exist and could also reside outside of galaxies in intergalactic space.
Quick setting: The existence of countless primordial black holes scattered throughout the darkness of space ranging from tiny to unfathomable is pretty cool, but the real selling point here is what finding them might tell us about dark matter.
We can’t prove dark matter exists because we haven’t found it yet, but we’re pretty sure the vast majority of the universe is made up of it. Many scientists believe that black holes are closely related to dark matter because of the way they deal with gravity.
The research and observation of SLABs could serve to unravel some of the mystery surrounding the origin of the universe and, with proper correlation with other hypothetical types of black holes, finally point us to the first measurable observation by the humanity of dark matter in the background of the universe.
You can read the team’s research paper here.
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