The largest black holes in the universe could be exploited, for example, in the search for dark matter.
Is there are black holes and supermassive black holes. There are also ultra-massive, billions of sun-sized black holes. But how big can a black hole eventually grow?
According to a recent study, black holes can be so huge that an entirely new category is needed to express their size: insanely massive (stupendously large) black holes.
Such black holes weigh more than a hundred billion Suns. They could be located in interstellar space instead of galaxy centers, according to a study by Queen Mary University in London.
Research was published Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. It was reported, among other things ScienceAlert and Phys.org.
Over here until black holes are classified according to their mass into four categories.
Small black holes arise in the death collapse of large stars. Their mass corresponds to a maximum of a few tens of Suns.
The category of medium-sized black holes is more volatile. They correspond to a mass of approximately 100 or even 100,000 Suns, although some also classify medium-sized black holes as masses corresponding to a million Suns.
The first direct observation of a medium-sized black hole was made only in September 2020.
In light of current knowledge, medium-sized black holes arise from collisions of numerous small black holes, as a result of which they grow first from small to medium-sized and then to supermassive.
Supermassive black holes correspond to masses of millions or billions of Suns, and their gravity pulls entire galaxies around them.
Also in the middle of the Milky Way is a supermassive black hole corresponding to a mass of four million Suns, Sagittarius A *.
The largest black holes ever observed are ultra-massive in size, weighing more than ten billion Suns.
The largest known black hole in the universe corresponds to a mass of 40 billion Suns. This giant is hiding in the middle of a galaxy called Holmberg 15A.
Researchers there has been no consensus so far on how large a black hole can grow.
According to one model, black holes form inside their own galaxy. They are born in the collapse of the big stars and then eat around the stars, gas and dust. Eventually, they connect to other massive black holes in galaxy collisions.
In this model, the black hole can grow to a size of up to 50 billion Suns. A larger opening would require such a huge accumulation disc around it that it would crumble under its own mass.
However, the model has its problems. Supermassive black holes have been found in such an early universe that they would not have had time to devour the mass of stars alone to grow so massive in such a short time.
Another according to the theory, black holes would have been created even before galaxies were born. The idea of primitive black holes was first proposed in 1966.
According to the theory, in the early universe, areas so dense sometimes formed that they collapsed into black holes.
Such black holes were not dependent on the mass of the stars, allowing their diameter to vary from grapefruit to the entire galaxy.
Researchers at Queen Mary University based their calculations specifically on primitive black holes.
According to calculations, insanely massive black holes could reach more than one hundred billion solar masses, at most up to a trillion (10 to the power of 18).
The event horizon of a black hole a trillion times larger than the Sun would spread over 620,000 light-years. The diameter of our Milky Way is about one hundred thousand light-years.
“Extreme and speculative calculation. There is no reason to assume that such black holes exist, but on the other hand, their existence cannot be proved against them either, ”says the cosmologist of the University of Helsinki. Hannu Kurki-Suonio.
According to him, the observations so far support the notion that the largest black holes in the middle of the galaxies are approaching a mass of one hundred billion Suns.
Black holes outside galaxies, on the other hand, would be very difficult, perhaps impossible to detect. This is because the black hole itself does not emit light. Thus, if there is no matter falling into the black hole outside the galaxies, they remain completely invisible.
“Probably no such large black holes exist, but due to the limited findings, we cannot completely rule out this possibility.”
There is a huge black hole in the middle of the galaxy M87.
Just whereas the lack of observations is the reason why the idea of insanely massive black holes has been ignored in the past, says the astronomer who led the research Bernard Carr. Him is known among other things, as one of the deceased physicists Stephen Hawkingin trusted students.
According to Carr, the purpose of the study was to understand how such giants would affect the surrounding space.
They could be used, for example, in the search for dark matter. Dark matter is believed to make up the majority of the mass of the universe.
It has been proposed to consist of wimp particles that interact weakly. If a massive black hole were to collect these particles around it, they would collide with each other and, when destroyed, form a circle of gamma radiation.
Such a circle could be detected, for example, by means of a gravitational lens, Carr suggests. The lens acts as a massive object that refracts electromagnetic radiation such as light emitted by the object behind it.
A hole in space
■ Black holes are extremely dense concentrations of space-time. They arise when a large star collapses towards the end of its life cycle.
■ Their gravity is so enormous that nothing that ended up in the opening can get out of there.
■ The first indirect observation was made about the black hole in the early 1970s. It was detected by X-rays.
■ Direct observations of black holes have been made since 2015. The collision of two black holes generates gravitational waves that can be measured. Twenty collisions have been secured.
■ The first image of the black hole was released in 2019. The target was a supermassive black hole in the middle of the M87 galaxy. Its mass is equivalent to billions of Suns. The image was composed of data collected by several radio telescopes.
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source https://pledgetimes.com/space-the-research-teams-calculations-allowed-for-such-a-massive-black-hole-that-it-had-to-develop-its-own-category-a-mindless-black-hole-would-spread-across-the-entire-galaxy/
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