An ultra-distant quasar showing plenty of evidence for a supermassive black hole at its center. How that black hole got so massive so quickly is a topic of contentious scientific debate, but may have an answer that fits within our standard theories. Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Univ of Michigan/R.C.Reis et al; Optical: NASA/STScI.

Universe’s Largest Black Hole May Have An Explanation At Last

Black holes shouldn’t be this big, much less this big so many billions of years ago. Yet here we are.

“Ultramassive black holes — that is, black holes with masses exceeding 10 billion solar masses — are probably not rare; several and even dozens of these colossal black holes may exist.” -Julie Hlavacek-Larrondo

The brightest, most luminous objects in the entire Universe are neither stars nor galaxies, but quasars, like S5 0014+81.

An illustration of an active black hole, one that accretes matter and accelerates a portion of it outwards in two perpendicular jets, is an outstanding descriptor of how quasars work. Image credit: Mark A. Garlick.

The sixth brightest quasar known so far, its mass was determined in a 2009 study: 40 billion Suns.

The mass of a black hole is the sole determining factor of the radius of the event horizon, for a non-rotating, isolated black hole. The most massive one of all is presently S5 0014+81, at 40,000,000,000 solar masses. Illustration credit: SXS team; Bohn et al 2015.

Its physical size would have a radius that’s 800 times the Earth-Sun distance, or over 100 billion kilometers.

The Triangulum galaxy might not be as massive or impressive as ourselves or Andromeda, but it’s the farthest object from Earth visible with the naked eye, and the third largest galaxy in our local group. Image credit: Robert Gendler, Subaru Telescope (NAOJ).