Black hole 12 billion times bigger than Sun swallows science theory

Scientists have discovered a black hole so big it just swallowed up their theory about how big they can grow.

Scientists are now trying to figure out why a black hole formed about 900 million years after the Big Bang doesn’t fit the current theory about how big it should be. With measurements indicating it’s 12 billion times the size of the Sun, the black hole challenges a widely accepted hypothesis of growth rates.

“Based on previous research, this is the largest black hole found for that period of time,” says Dr Fuyan Bian, Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Australian National University (ANU). “Current theory is for a limit to how fast a black hole can grow, but this black hole is too large for that theory.”

Many scientists have long believed the growth rate of black holes is limited. The theory goes that black holes grow as they absorb mass. However, as mass is absorbed, it will be heated creating radiation pressure, which pushes the mass away from the black hole.

An artist's illustration shows a supermassive black hole with millions to billions times the mass of our sun at the centre, surrounded by matter flowing onto the black hole in what is termed as an accretion disk. – Reuters/NASA

“Basically, you have two forces balanced together, which sets up a limit for growth, which is much smaller than what we found,” says Bian.

The black hole was discovered by a team of global scientists led by Xue-Bing Wu at Peking University, China, as part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, which provided imagery data of 35% of the northern hemisphere sky.

The ANU is leading a comparable project, known as SkyMapper, to carry out observations of the Southern Hemisphere sky.

Bian expects more black holes to be observed as the project advances, so don’t be surprised if his team finds bigger ones in the near future. You have been warned. – Reuters