Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Black Holes May Not Grow Beyond Certain Limit

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the stand-back-I-don't-know-how-big-it's-gonna-get dept.

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."

5 of 201 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Tens of billion? by Hatta · · Score: 5, Funny

    So the phrase "astronomical numbers" is now superseded by "economical numbers".

    --
    Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
  2. Colliding black holes by CubicleView · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm sure I'm basing this on some bad sci fi movie or other, but can't two of these maxed out black holes merge together (in theory at least) to form a larger one?

  3. Re:Tens of billion? by gv250 · · Score: 5, Informative

    There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers.
    Richard Feynman, US educator & physicist (1918 - 1988)
    http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/26930.html

  4. Just Like MRIs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What we today call MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) used to be called NMRI (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging). As with "Black Holes", people were afraid of anything "nuclear"; hence the name change.

  5. Re:Interesting repercussions by SBacks · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Why does everyone assume that nothingness is the default? From everything we've observed of the universe, it tends towards chaos and disorder (entropy). Nothingness is the complete lack of entropy, so why would should that be considered stable?

    And, by the way, there are branches of cosmology that contend that the universe, has, in fact, always been and will always be. It comes from the idea that as you measure time further and further backwards, you find yourself measuring time forwards again. It has something to do with string theory, but the math is way beyond me.