Size is relative in a world like ours. A quarter may seem big compared to a dime, an adult to a child, even a house to an apartment. Yet, some things I’ve always considered to be massive, no matter what compared to. One of these things is the sun. T
he radius of the sun is 432,450 miles (only the radius!!!) while the radius of the earth is only about 4,000 miles. Just take a look at the image to the right to see the comparison of the sun to the earth and other planets. See, the sun is something that represents the definition of “massive” or “enormous” or “colossal” to me. That was until I stumbled upon an article noting a recent discovery of a black hole in the universe.
In February of this past year, researchers in China discovered a black hole, which they say is 12 billion times more massive than the sun. Their findings were published in Nature, an international weekly journal of science. It is difficult to even imagine something of that size, 12 times heavier than the sun. And it got this large in an abnormally short amount of time of 875 million year after the big bang. This is “astonishingly young” in comparison to other black holes of its size.
I’d like to clarify what a black hole is to have a general understanding for everyone who reads the blog. According to NASA, it is a place in space where gravity pulls so much that even light cannot escape. Black holes are invisible due to this inability of escaping light, so space telescopes with special tools are needed to find them. They form when the center of a large star collapses upon itself. This causes a supernova, which is an exploding star that blasts part of the star into space.
The most interesting part about this black hole is that it gained such an enormous mass in such a short amount of time. One possible explanation of this could be that it was formed by the collapse of a very large gas cloud, rather than a star. What ever the reasoning behind its creation, this black hole has been remarkable in its discovery and will continue to teach us valuable things about outer space.
As intriguing as the subject of black holes is, it also is quite frightening. If a black hole were to even come relatively close to the Milky Way, we would all be doomed. After reading your blog post a couple of questions came to my mind such as will the Earth ever fall into a black hole. I looked it up and fortunately for us, the closest black hole, V4641 Sagittarii, is 24,000 light years away…or in other words it’s 22,300,000,000,000,000 miles away from the earth. Let’s hope that it stays that far away for good.
Wow! So interesting! Have there been any studies conducted measuring the black hole and it’s risks that may come with it? Due to it’s extreme mass, is there a possibility that it could effect our solar system or even galaxy in the near future? It seems to be a more recent finding and would definitely need to have more research conducted on it to figure out what the future of this massive black hole may hold. In the meantime, here is an animation video link displaying a black hole guzzling up a star. Let’s hope that won’t be happening to us any time soon! http://www.morningticker.com/2015/10/watch-a-massive-black-hole-destroy-a-star-video/
This post raises interesting questions about the mysterious black holes. In addition to this black hole, I found an article about another black hole that scientists are surprised at how large it is. http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/26/world/black-hole-is-30-times-expected-size/. This black hole is so big, that according to scientists’ earlier theories about black holes, a black hole this size should not exist. In your post, the rapid growth of the black hole also challenged scientists’ current knowledge. Although both of these black holes are very far away from earth, it may be important for scientists to be aware of possible black hole growth rate and gravitational pull and a possibility that a black hole could someday effect life on earth.