UC Astronomers Discover Two Largest Black Holes Ever Found
USinfo | 2013-08-12 15:16


 
These black hole’s huge realms of gravity could eat up 10 of our solar systems
 
Researchers from the University of California – Berkeley have found the two largest supermassive black holes to date, which are approximately 330 million light-years away.
 
University of California astronomers Michele Capellari, Nicholas McConnell, and Chung-Pei Ma found the monstrous black holes via the Keck II and Gemini North observatories, along with the McDonald Observatory in Texas and the Hubble Space Telescope. They measured the speed of stars moving around the black holes, where the faster the stars move, the more gravity is needed to keep them from flying away. The research team used these velocities to calculate the mass of each black hole.
 
According to the astronomers, the first black hole is in the center of the galaxy NGC 3842 and weighs approximately 9.7 billion suns. It’s about 331 million light-years away in constellation Leo.
 
The second black hole is placed in galaxy NGC 4889 and could have a greater mass of 21 billion suns, though researchers are not 100 percent sure on that quite yet. It’s also a little further away at 336 million light-years in the Coma galaxy cluster.
 
These black hole’s huge realms of gravity could eat up 10 of our solar systems, and outweigh the former leader of the black holes, which was located in the elliptical galaxy Messier 87 and weighed 6.3 billion solar masses.
 
“These are the most massive reliably measured black holes ever,” said McConnell. “Measurements of these of these massive black holes will help us understand how their host galaxies were assembled, and how the holes achieved such monstrous mass.”
 
Ma explained that black holes could possibly grow by either swallowing gas around them or merging with other black holes.
 
“We did not expect to find such massive black holes because they are more massive than indicated by their galaxy properties,” said Ma. “They’re kind of extraordinary. If there is any bigger black hole, we should be able to find them in the next year or two. Personally, I think we are probably reaching the high end now. Maybe another factor of two to go at best.”
 
In addition to learning how these black holes grow so large, the research team hopes to reveal if black holes are indeed the missing link between the early universe and the present. Supermassive black holes have been predicted based on quasars, which are ultra-luminous, energetic and distant discs that enclosed the event horizons of black holes in the early universe. It was thought that quasars were powered by these giant black holes.
 
“Our discovery of extremely massive black holes in the largest present-day galaxies suggests that these galaxies could be the ancient remains of voracious ancestors,” said McConnell.
 
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