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The Largest Black Holes in the Universe

A black hole, according to the general theory of relativity, is a region of space from which nothing, including light, can escape. It is the result of the deformation of spacetime caused by a very compact mass. Around a black hole there is an undetectable surface which marks the point of no return, called an event horizon. It is called “black” because it absorbs all the light that hits it, reflecting nothing, just like a perfect black body in thermodynamics. Under the theory of quantum mechanics, black holes possess a temperature and emit Hawking radiation, but for black holes of stellar mass or larger this temperature is much lower than that of the cosmic background radiation.
black hole 4 The Largest Black Holes in the Universe
Despite its invisible interior, a black hole can be observed through its interaction with other matter. A black hole can be inferred by tracking the movement of a group of stars that orbit a region in space. Alternatively, when gas falls into a stellar black hole from a companion star, the gas spirals inward, heating to very high temperatures and emitting large amounts of radiation that can be detected from earthbound and Earth-orbiting telescopes.

Astronomers have identified numerous stellar black hole candidates, and have also found evidence of supermassive black holes at the center of galaxies. In 1998, astronomers found compelling evidence that a supermassive black hole of more than 2 million solar masses is located near the Sagittarius A* region in the center of the Milky Way galaxy, and more recent results using additional data find evidence that the supermassive black hole is more than 4 million solar masses.


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This entry was posted by CV on Friday, July 16th, 2010 at 1:11 pm and is filed under Cool. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Comments

  1. Garry Tatro says:

    That’s a nice written page!

  2. Jeremy says:

    you cant see black holes

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