Largest Black Hole in the Cosmos: Putting Things Into Perspective

Ever since amateur British astronomer Reverend John Michell suggested in 1783 the existence of black holes, these theoretical regions of space have continued to baffle the scientific community. But despite the mystique surrounding black holes, astrophysicists were still able to come up with a few verifiable facts that never fail to send chills down every human being's spine.

Black holes, for starters, are said to be space regions where the gravitational field is so strong that not even visible light can escape. Experts have deduced that every single massive galaxy hosts a black hole in its center, and that even our own Milky Way galaxy has one. Astronomers believe that this particular black hole is situated in an area known as Sagittarius A*.

Given that black holes pull in everything, making them virtually invisible, they can still be indirectly observed through their interaction with matter around their boundaries. For instance, gas and dust give off x-rays as they spiral into a particular black hole. Experts have located stars in other galaxies orbiting particularly bright regions containing highly concentrated gas and emitting unusual large amount of radiation.

Astronomers maintain that the size of black holes is directly proportional to the size of their host galaxy. Theoretically speaking, there is no limit to the amount of matter black holes can suck in so there is no

telling how massive can they become.

Even though principles of regular physics break down at the center of black holes, these regions are still bounded by certain laws. For instance, the universe has just existed for a finite amount of time. This means that there is a current limit to the amount of matter the biggest black hole has consumed. Given that, then, one can’t help but wonder how massive is the biggest black hole to date.

According to experts, the largest black hole ever observed has a mass of 18 billion suns. To put matters into perspective, our sun has a mass of 1.9891 ×10^30 kg or roughly around 332,946 Earths. Now, multiply this astonishingly large number to 18 billion. That’s the mass of the largest black hole ever observed in the cosmos which is located at the heart of the active galaxy (quasar) OJ287, 3.5 billion light years away.

We are emphasizing the phrase “ever observed” for a reason. This is because astronomers believe that somewhere out there, there are black holes even bigger than the one OJ287 hosts. According to mathematical equations, experts suggested that the biggest black holes have a mass of around 50 billion suns, or almost thrice the mass of the impossibly large number we just described. We’ll let that thought sink in for a little while…

After being awash with wonder and probably feelings of insignificance knowing how literally small we really are, we should probably be grateful that we are able to learn about these facts from the comfort of our planet. But that is not to forget that outside our comfort zones, there are things, cosmological monstrosities if you will, waiting to be unraveled.

http://www.scienceonline.org/cgi/content/summary/303/5662/1261a

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http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/~barnes/ast110_06/bhaq/Black_Hole_Milkyway.jpg

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2008/09/50-billion-suns.html

http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn13166-biggest-black-hole-in-the-cosmos-discovered.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OJ287

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