Jakarta –
Black holes are some of the most massive single objects in space. But what is the largest type of black hole and how big is it?
The black hole named TON 618 is said to be the largest black hole that has ever existed. In Live Science, it weighs up to 40 billion solar masses.
TON 618 is located about 18.2 billion light years from Earth. In the night sky, it is on the border between the constellations Canes Venatici and Coma Berenices.
Astronomers first spotted it in a 1957 survey from the Tonantzintla Observatory in Mexico. At first, they thought it was a dim blue star, but observations a decade later revealed that astronomers had caught glimpses of the intense radiation from matter falling into the black hole.
TON 618 Powers Quasars
TON 618 powers quasars, one of the brightest objects in the entire universe with the illumination power of 140 trillion suns. Quasars draw light from the black hole’s central gravitational energy.
While the most powerful supernova, the explosion of a star, can briefly outperform a quasar, a supernova only lasts a few weeks. In contrast, quasars can shine for millions of years.
However, quasars are so far away that they appear only as faint points of visible light in even the most powerful telescopes. Quasars are actually eating supermassive black holes. Supermassive black holes become massive through combinations of mergers with other black holes and are constantly eating matter around them.
It is this feeding rate that determines the size limit of a black hole. Astronomers can estimate the maximum mass of a black hole by taking its feeding rate and multiplying it by the known age of the universe. The results provide an estimate of a maximum mass of about 50 billion solar masses.
However, it is still included in the estimate. It is possible that there are still many giant black holes in the universe.
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