How big is the largest black hole in the universe? A lot of people are curious about this question, as if they want to know how big the biggest star is!
The sun is the ruler of the solar system, its mass accounts for 99.86% of the entire solar system visible material, the Earth, Jupiter (equivalent to 318 times the mass of the Earth), Saturn (equivalent to 96 times the mass of the Earth) and other eight planets combined, plus asteroid moons and comets and other celestial bodies, the total mass accounts for four thousandths, showing how huge the sun is.
But the sun such a mass of stars in the universe can only be considered average, at night we look at the starry sky, can see almost every star is larger than the sun, because the light emitted by stars smaller than the sun is relatively weak, only a few very close can see, most of them are invisible, The brightest star in the night sky, Sirius, is 2.1 times the mass of the Sun, and this is because it is so close to us, only 8.6 light-years away, and the largest known mass star is R136a1 in the Great Magellanic Galaxy, with a mass of 265 to 315 times the solar energy, which is a powerful star, but its volume is not the largest, but it is still more than 30,000 times larger than the Sun.
There are still many "fat" stars in the universe, such as Betelgeuse in the constellation Orion, which is equivalent to 400 million suns, and the famous UY Shield is 4.5 billion times the volume of the sun, but the largest star today is Stephenson 2-18, comparable to 10 billion suns, but their mass is not very large, generally below 30 times the mass of the sun.
But whether it is volume or mass, giant stars in front of giant black holes are also "small witches", the mass of the black hole Sagittarius a* at the center of the Milky Way galaxy is 4.31 million times that of the sun, the mass of the black hole at the center of the Andromeda galaxy is 100 million times that of the sun, the first black hole that was photographed by scientists, the mass of the black hole at the center of the M87 galaxy is 6.6 billion times that of the sun, friends who like astronomy should know the giant black hole Ton618, which is the famous "king of black holes".
The Ton618 black hole has a mass of 66 billion times that of the Sun, and is considered to be the largest single celestial body in the universe, comparable to 1/23 of the total mass of the Milky Way, more than 15,500 times the mass of the medium-sized black hole in the Milky Way, and more massive than many small galaxies, such as 6.6 times the mass of the Milky Way's close neighbor, the Great Magellanic Galaxy, equivalent to more than 100,000 times the mass of the smallest known galaxy Segri 2, and its strong gravitational pull allows it to swallow up material equivalent to 91 Earth masses every day.
Astronomers have estimated the massive mass of Ton 618 from the correlation of hydrogen β rays, which is as far away as 10.4 billion light-years away, but its bright figure can still be seen in astronomical telescopes, and it was discovered in the 1960s. It is estimated that Ton618 is 400 billion kilometers in diameter, which is more than the largest star, Stephenson 2-18, and millions of times the latter.
However, with the advancement of astronomical observation technology, scientists have discovered a larger giant black hole SDSS J073739.96 +384413.2, which has a mass of 104 billion times that of the Sun, 1.57 times the mass of Ton618, and a diameter of 2053 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun, which is about 611.8 billion kilometers, yes Ton618 is 1.53 times the diameter of this black hole Macro, which astronomers have estimated through the correlation of a ionizing emission line of magnesium, and there has been little information and data about him before, and the details remain to be seen later.
In May 2020, Finnish scientists discovered a larger black hole called SDSS J140821.67+025733.2, about 3.5 billion light-years from the solar system, at the center of the OJ287 quasar, where there are two huge black holes with a smaller black hole mass 100 million times that of the Sun, orbiting the larger black hole (SDSS J140821.67+025733.2) every 12 years. The larger black hole has a mass of 196 billion times that of the Sun (but another theory is 18 billion times that of the Sun), which is almost 3 times the mass of Ton618, which can be called the new "king of black holes", and Ton618 has been "relegated to the third line".
How did such a black hole form? It is speculated that it, like the ton618 and M87 central black holes, and the milky way central black hole, was formed at the beginning of the universe and was a "native black hole" almost the same age as the universe.
Resources:
World Wide Web's May 20, 2020 article "Scientists have found a giant black hole, larger than Ton618"