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Giant black hole tips the scale at 4 billion billion billion billion tons |
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Written by Derek Kessler on
Thursday, 10 January 2008
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 Astronomers have finished the analyzation of a supermassive black hole 3.5 billion light-years from Earth, and it weighs in at an astounding 18 billion solar masses - that's 36,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilograms. This black hole is six times more massive than the previous record holder, and is so powerful that it actually has another black hole trapped in its gravitational pull.
The orbiting smaller black hole allowed scientists to make their measurments. The gravitational pull of black holes are so strong that trap light and other energy that gets near, which makes direct observation from Earth impossible. Instead we have to look at the effects the black hole has on the surrounding space, from the orbits of smaller bodies to the lensing (gravitational bending) of energy that passes by.
Quasars are one of the few predictable classes of stellar objects in our universe. They regularly emit pulses of light or other energy, ranging from every few seconds to every several years. This particular black hole, OJ287, releases two major pulses every twelve years. Located in a developing galaxy, the pulses easily outshine the rest of the galaxy. The first pair of observed pulses was detected in 1994 and 1995, and the first of the second set was seen in 2005. The observations allowed astronomers to refine their computer models and predict that the next pulse would arrive on September 13, 2007.
And arrive it did. Finnish astronomer Mauri Valtonen said that there was a simple explanation for the two pulses every dozen years, "In addition to the primary back hole in the [accretion] disk, we have a secondary black hole that crosses the disk twice during the orbital period, and that's what gives us the two pulses." The next pulse is due in January 2016.
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"Yes ma'am. His army of evil."
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