Black hole outgrows its home galaxy
Space news has been pretty eventful lately but some new findings might take the weirdness of recent space events to a new level. The new piece of research that was published today in the Science journal may put a lot of what was known about black holes in a fog.
The story of the black hole being too large for home only 2 billion years after the Big Bang has many in the science community stupefied. Prior to this publication, the science world was led to believe that black holes and galaxies grew at the same time. However, this newly discovered black hole has outgrown the galaxy. Even more startling is the fact that the galaxy continues to grow despite the presence of the black hole’s enormity. An astrophysics professor from the group of researchers that was part of the study has stated that it was only meant to study less exciting things, not a completely never-before-seen phenomenon such as this black hole. The find surprised them and the rest of the science community.
this massive black hole is the largest one ever seen
To date, this black hole is the biggest one scientists have ever found. In comparison to our home star, the Sun, the solar mass of this monster is seven billion times as large. It’s basically the same as the ratio of the entire human population of Earth to you, one person.
What does this mean for us and for space science?
As mentioned previously, this new finding on the black hole earlier in galactic time has scientists scratching their head at the contradictory nature. It is contradictory because it means have to rethink what we know about the universe and the fact that the galaxy the black hole is in continues to grow despite it being there. It’s kind of like a stationary tornado is going on and a whole metropolitan city continuing to be built in the nearby vicinity, despite the threat.
A Jurassic Park quote seems appropriate here, the sentiment that “Life finds a way” being quite applicable to this new discovery.
