Supermassive Black Holes!


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Supermassive Black Holes Are 10 Billion Times More Massive Than the Sun

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Artist's concept of a supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy; Credit: NASA JPL

The next time you take an intergalactic trip to deep space, make sure that you avoid the galaxies of NGC 3842 and NGC 4889 because you just might get yourself sucked into one of the two largest black holes in the known universe.

Recently discovered by an international team of astronomers, these two black holes are at least as heavy as 10 billion Suns. According to University of California, Berkeley, these two black holes are more than 300 million light years from Earth and they threaten to consume anything and everything within an area that's five times the size of our own solar system.

These two supermassive black holes--the largest form of black holes--form the center of two galaxies NGC 3842 and NGC 4889.

What's so fascinating about these massive beasts isn't just that they are large, but they also may be the remnants of quasars--galactic nuclei that typically surround a black hole. Quasars are perhaps the most luminous, powerful, and energetic objects in the universe, and are often found at the centers of young galaxies like NGC 4261, 3C 273 (the brightest galaxy to appear in the Earth's sky), and perhaps even our own Milky Way Galaxy.

Basically, at the center of a typical young galaxy is a small black hole surrounded by a quasar, which is itself powered by the black hole. As the black hole sucks in more and more matter, it grows more and more powerful and massive, and it eventually sucks in the quasar that once surrounded it.

Interestingly enough, some quasars are so massive that they have jets of gas shooting out of them that extend many light years into space. These jets are formed from matter that gets torn apart as it approaches the black hole, releasing some mater and energy. According to the Department of Physics & Astronomy at the University of Tennessee, NGC 4261 has a jet that stretches 88 thousand light years from the black hole.

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