Most Massive Black Hole in the Universe Found -An 'Event Horizon' 20 Billion Kilometers Wide

Most Massive Black Hole in the Universe Found -An 'Event Horizon' 20 Billion Kilometers Wide (Today's Most Popular)

A stunning example of the power and effervescence of supermassive black holes is shown in this Chandra space telescope image above of the elliptical galaxy M87 in the Virgo Cluster. The features in this image imply that outbursts and deep sounds have been generated by the black hole for eons.

The black hole at the center of the supergiant elliptical galaxy fifty million light-years away is the most massive black hole for which a precise mass has been measured -6.6 billion solar masses. Orbiting the galaxy is an abnormally large population of about 12,000 globular clusters, compared to 150-200 globular clusters orbiting the Milky Way.

Using the Frederick C. Gillett Gemini Telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, a team of astronomers calculated the black hole’s mass, which is vastly larger than the black hole in the center of the Milky Way, which is about 4 million solar masses. Astronomer Karl Gebhardt of the University of Texas, Austin, said that the black hole’s event horizon, 20 billion km across, “could swallow our solar system whole.”