Black Holes May Not Grow Beyond Certain Limit

xyz writes "Do black holes increase in size indefinitely? According to an analysis by astronomers at Yale and the European Southern Observatory, the maximum size a black hole may reach is only few tens of billion of solar masses. The limit was calculated using an analysis of what may happen to the gas surrounding a black hole which has reached few tens of billions of solar masses. It is thought that black holes of such size heat the surrounding gas to a temperature where the radiation pressure begins blowing outer layers into space."

Comments

Tens of billion?

[courteaudotbiz]

few tens of billion of solar masses

Since when "tens of billion" is "few"?

Re:Tens of billion?

[OglinTatas]

When your national debt is in the tens of trillions

Re:Tens of billion?

[Hatta]

So the phrase "astronomical numbers" is now superseded by "economical numbers".

Re:Tens of billion?

[eldavojohn]

When your national debt is in the tens of trillions

Stop spreading FUD, it's only a single ten of trillion.

What if our universe were one big black hole?

[PrescriptionWarning]

I either just blew your mind, or sucked it.

Re:Agreed, Very Interesting repercussions

[Clandestine_Blaze]

All I could think of was that I really wish they called micro black holes that exist for minute fractions of a second something other than "black holes." It scares people unnaturally

What scares me unnaturally is the uncanny resemblance. We're doomed!

Limits on balck holes?

[oodaloop]

Clearly they've never been to goatse.

Re:Interesting repercussions

[Ethanol-fueled]

Unless you adopt the Hindu/Buddhist take on the cosmology... it wasn't created, it didn't magically poof into existence out of nothing: it just is. Always has been, always will be, and goes through periodic cycles of growth and destruction, without end.

...and that's the explanation which makes the most sense to me. I like science to be mundane and predictable. If I want drama then I'll go see a movie and entertain the thought of some big magical guy in a toga who made the Earth with snot and space rocks.

Re:Agreed, Very Interesting repercussions

[Anonymous Coward]

I was trying to relay what I had read about the micro black holes the LHC is trying to create to a female coworker.

For some reason I read this as "LHC is trying to create a female coworker", and I thought that was a pretty funny joke, until I realized that wasn't what you meant to say at all.

Re:Agreed, Very Interesting repercussions

[sexconker]

Seems to me that that Large Hardon Collider would be seeking to create male coworkers.

Re:Agreed, Very Interesting repercussions

[psychicninja]

As always, it brings up interesting questions about what was before that epoch...

The Sixties?

Re:Interesting repercussions

[cthulu_mt]

I have enough trouble with "dry counties"; the thought of a dry galaxy makes we want to weep.

Re:Interesting repercussions

[Anonymous Coward]

...some twat in the sky creating us..

All hail the Magic Celestial Vagina!

We need to find the ANCIENT TIME-LOOP DEVICE

[Joe The Dragon]

To control the loop.

Real limits on black holes

[ziani]

Personal experience has shown that black holes expand to about the size of a corporate accounting department.

They may actually be one and the same thing.

UPPER BOUNDS OF BLACKHOLE!

[Windows_NT]

Bill Gates found it in the 80's:
640K!

Re:Interesting repercussions

[The Wooden Badger]

Great Scott!

Re:Agreed, Very Interesting repercussions

[aproposofwhat]

"if you can remember them, you probably weren't there"

Though after the shock news of myelin erosion increasing after the age of 39, most of us who were there are now struggling to remember...

Oh, and get off my lawn :P

Re:Agreed, Very Interesting repercussions

[aproposofwhat]

"Death, Tiny Destroyer of Worlds"

So that's a microVishnu, then?