Astronomers reveal the biggest known black hole to be ever detected, some 300 million light years away.
NASA and the European Space Agency's Hubble Space Telescope just released an image of a distant galaxy known as NGC 4889 that is located in the Coma Cluster where scientists say that this giant galaxy holds a dark cosmic mystery.
ESA officials say that this particular galaxy contains a supermassive black hole which possesses 21 billion solar masses or 21 billion suns. This black hole also has an event horizon spanning 81 billion miles, where any dust, cosmic material, sound or even light can no longer escape past this point. This horizon can even be compared to Neptune completing an orbit around the sun, 15 times.
However, scientists revealed that this black hole is no longer in its prime as it is no longer devouring stars and cosmic dust. ESA says that this monster black hole apparently stopped feeding on the galaxy NGC 4889. Currently, the environment surrounding the galaxy has been peaceful so far, that stars are now forming with remaining gas without being disturbed, that are now orbiting the black hole.
Astronomers explain the mechanism behind these active black holes, where the supermassive black hole inside NGC 4889 is powered by a process called hot accretion. Galactic material like dust, gas and other cosmic debris are slowly being reeled in towards the core of the black hole where this material accumulates and forms an accretion disc.
This spinning disc of material is now orbiting the black hole and accelerates faster due to the black hole's immense gravitational forces, reaching temperatures of up to millions of degrees. When this material heats up, it releases powerful jets of energy across the universe.
When this supermassive black hole was still active, astronomers classified the NGC 4889 as a quasar since the disc around the galaxy was emitting so much high energies, that are estimated to be not less than a thousand times the total energy emission of the Milky Way.
Apart from this, ESA also says that it is also impossible to observe a black holes with visual light since light cannot escape its powerful gravity, however, a black hole's mass can be indirectly determined, which revealed the mass of this monster supermassive black hole.
With the help of powerful instruments and observatories such as the ones housed in the Keck II Observatory and Gemini North Telescope, astronomers measured the stars' velocity around NGC 4889's center that determined the mass of the stars depending on how fast they are orbiting around, which can also determine the colossal mass of the supermassive black hole itself.