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12-Billion-Solar-Mass Black Hole Discovered
sciencehabit writes: A team of astronomers has discovered what is, in galactic terms, a monstrous baby: a gigantic black hole of 12 billion solar masses in a barely newborn galaxy, just 875 million years after the big bang. It's roughly 3000 times the size of our Milky Way's central black hole. To have grown to such a size in so short a time, it must have been munching matter at close to the maximum physically possible rate for most of its existence. Its large size and rate of consumption also makes it the brightest object in that distant era, and astronomers can use its bright light to study the composition of the early universe: how much of the original hydrogen and helium from the big bang had been forged into heavier elements in the furnaces of stars.
Supermassive black holes have a different origin than stellar black holes
Anyway how big is it now (if it was 12 billion solar masses 12 billion years ago it must be pretty big now. Does this account for the missing dark matter?
"it must have been munching matter at close to the maximum physically possible rate"
That "maximum possible rate" sure sounds like bullshit.
Why does it sound like BS? Given that a huge fraction of the matter spiraling into the black hole is converted into energy before it falls in, that creates an outward pressure that limits how much more matter can follow. So there is a maximum rate that the black hole can accumulate mass.
Our galaxy is 1000 billion suns in mass. So this guy is 1.2% the mass of our entire galaxy. That's huge. By comparison, the black hole at the center of our galaxy is 4 million suns in mass.
"the space is at 100% of its capacity to hold matter" You can say that, but that doesn't make it so.
I wonder if the accretion disk could get to the point of pair instability thereby reducing the photon pressure and increasing the rate of flow across the event horizon. I did a little Googling, but any knowledgeable pointer would be appreciated - as I'm sure the idea is not novel.