http://phys.org/news/2012-11-astronomers-massive-unusual-black-hole.html

I find cosmology and all that STUFF endlessly fascinating, that there is something else to be endlessly fascinated by just goes on the pile of endlessly fascinating stuff! and this thread won’t get its dues, because i think that sort of stuff is just fabulous but boring and meaningless at the same time!

mind ****.

God is SOOO amazing!

😯

At 17 billion solar masses, the black hole weighs an extraordinary 14 percent of the total galaxy mass

😯

Ok numpty question time.

Other than my wife’s bum … Is that the biggest single “thing” in existence?

Obviously our own Sun is minuscule in comparison to that SMBH… but how do the largest stars compare? Are they still really really really small sat next to that?

Is that its event horizon in that pic?

How do you weigh a black hole?

Our puny ape brains can never fully comprehend the universe.

Obviously our own Sun is minuscule in comparison to that SMBH… but how do the largest stars compare? Are they still really really really small sat next to that?

I guess so, on the basis that a black hole has to start off as a huge star, then sucks things in and gets even bigger, it must be bigger than a big star.

Also a star is wayyyyy less dense than a black hole, but i’ve no idea if one could be that big.

[cosmology brain fart]
Surely we should have expected the biggest black holes in the smallest galaxies? How do we know the Galaxy wasn’t big to start with and has already been sucked into the black hole making it the biggest?
[/cosmology brain fart]

or in terms we can all understand “an area the size of Wales”

How do you weigh a black hole?

You can measure the effect it’s having on things outside it, such as gases.

At 17 billion solar masses, the black hole weighs an extraordinary 14 percent of the total galaxy mass

Aaaagh! 👿

We’re all DOOMED!

Well, this sucks…

And round the back it (possibly) blows

One of those moments when you realise just how small we really are. I really think as a human race we should make space exploration much more of a priority, imagine what other cool stuff we’d have found if we spent half the money that’s been spent on wars in the last 70 years on space exploration. I know this makes me sound like a stupid idealist but its one thing that really bugs me.

Our puny ape brains can never fully comprehend the universe

+1

My Pop has a good effort at ‘conceptualising’ it all – I fail after 17 seconds of discussion with him.

No it doesn’t.

One of those moments when you realise just how small we really are. I really think as a human race we should make space exploration much more of a priority, imagine what other cool stuff we’d have found if we spent half the money that’s been spent on wars in the last 70 years on space exploration. I know this makes me sound like a stupid idealist but its one thing that really bugs me.

Until we get Warp speed sorted, we’ll just be watching it all (millions of years after things happened) from our little perch on Earth….

a bit like watching your first brickie then Footflaps 😆

It’s stuff like this that blows my mind…

Yeah I agree with the space travel thing. We need to get our asses in gear. We’re progressing slower than ever – we need another victorian era steam revolution, but in jet propulsion and space travel.

58 years from the first power flight to the first space flight, and then only another 8 years till the moon landing. That is some rate of progress, but little in the 40 odd years since.

According to the scales used by most bike manufacturers this sucker only weighs about 34lbs.

imnotverygood – Member
According to the scales used by most bike manufacturers this sucker only weighs about 34lbs.

😆

Other than my wife’s bum … Is that the biggest single “thing” in existence?

Obviously our own Sun is minuscule in comparison to that SMBH… but how do the largest stars compare? Are they still really really really small sat next to that?
Ro5ey, that’s a damned good question, actually. It’s swallowed many, many stars and other debris, but I guess it has to be classed as a single ‘object. Trouble is, many galaxies appear to have black holes at their core, but who knows how big the damned things can actually get? A really old one could quite possibly have consumed it’s entire parent galaxy, thus having a mass of tens of millions of stars, and a radius of a large solar system, or bigger, possibly, but with nothing left for it to swallow, there wouldn’t be any x-radiation emitted at the Swartzchild radius to give the game away, only gravitational lensing when another stellar object passes behind it. The biggest stars are vast, the largest known is VY Canis Majoris:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VY_Canis_Majoris
Houns, another good question; I guess it’s the event horizon, but, really, who the hell knows! 😆
Unlike some people, I find this sort of thing endlessly fascinating, and hardly boring.
Discussing the results of some game of Wendyball, on the other hand, has me wanting to open a vein…

So speaking in plain terms they’ve found evidence of a Big F-off Black Hole. Everyone knows that Big F-off is the biggest unit of measure in the universe.