They are the “monsters” that lurk in the heart of most major galaxies.
And now a new NASA animation reveals exactly what puts the “super” in supermassive black holes.
It shows 10 of the most mysterious star-devouring giants occupying the center of their host galaxies, including the Milky Way and M87.
The animation scales each of the behemoths based on the size of their shadows, which we took a closer look at when the first images of black holes revealed a bright ring of hot orbiting gas surrounding a circular zone of darkness.
As light crosses the black hole’s event horizon, it becomes trapped forever, while any light that comes close is redirected by the object’s intense gravity.
Huge: A new NASA animation reveals exactly what puts the “super” in supermassive black holes
These two effects together create the “shadow” of the black hole, which is about twice the size of the actual event horizon.
Starting at our sun, the camera slowly pulls back to compare these ever-larger black holes to various structures in our solar system.
First up is a relative baby that is in dwarf galaxy 1601+3113. It has a mass of 100,000 suns, but this matter is so compressed that even the black hole’s shadow is smaller than our sun.
However, if that seems big, it soon becomes clear that you haven’t looked deep enough into the universe.
Next in size is the heart of our own galaxy, a supermassive black hole called Sagittarius A*.
It has the weight of about 4.3 million suns and has a shadow diameter of about half the orbit of Mercury in our solar system.
The animation then reveals two massive black holes in the galaxy NGC 7727, which is about 89 million light-years from Earth.
The two objects themselves are about 1600 light-years apart, but are very different in size.
One weighs 6 million solar masses and the other is equivalent to more than 150 million suns.
That’s bad news for the former, as astronomers say the pair will merge within the next 250 million years, causing the latter to gobble it up.
At this point we come to the big guns.
The first is M87’s black hole, which has a mass of 5.4 billion suns and a shadow so large that even a ray of light traveling at 670 million mph would take about two and a half days to get through it. do to go through it.
And finally, there’s a giant so big the clue is in the name.
TON 618 is one of the few extremely distant and massive black holes for which astronomers have direct measurements.
First up is a relative baby that is in dwarf galaxy 1601+3113. It has a mass of 100,000 suns, but this matter is so compressed that even the black hole’s shadow is smaller than our sun
The animation shows 10 of the mysterious star-consuming giants that occupy the center of their parent galaxies, including the Milky Way and M87
Giants: The camera starts near the sun and slowly pulls back to compare these ever-larger black holes to different structures in our solar system
It corresponds to a barely credible 60 billion solar masses and has a shadow so enormous that a beam of light would take weeks to pass.
“Direct measurements, many of them from the Hubble Space Telescope, confirm the presence of more than 100 supermassive black holes,” said Jeremy Schnittman, a theorist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.
‘How do they get so big? If galaxies collide, their central black holes may eventually merge too.’
Goddard astrophysicist Ira Thorpe added: ‘Since 2015, gravitational wave observatories on Earth have detected the mergers of black holes several tens of solar masses thanks to the small ripples in space-time produced by these events.
Mysterious: The animation reveals two massive black holes in the galaxy NGC 7727, which is about 89 million light-years from Earth. The two objects themselves (pictured) are about 1600 light-years apart, but are very different in size
Striking: The first-ever full-resolution image of a supermassive black hole was revealed by astronomers last month. It captures the black hole at the heart of M87
“Supermassive black hole mergers will produce waves of much lower frequencies that can be detected using a space-based observatory that is millions of times larger than its counterparts on Earth.”
For this reason, NASA is working with the European Space Agency (ESA) to develop the LISA mission.
An acronym for Laser Interferometer Space Antenna, it will be a constellation of three spacecraft in a triangle that will shoot laser beams back and forth over millions of miles.
The goal is to detect the passing gravitational waves of merging black holes with masses up to a few hundred million suns.
It is hoped that the mission will launch sometime in the next decade.