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Old 06-29-2004, 02:45 AM   #29 (permalink)
stingc
Psycho
 
Location: PA
Quote:
Originally posted by taog
I just wanted to point out that the black hole would be as massive as 1,000 of our solar systems. They don't mean as large. The black hole is probably smaller than our sun, but way more massive. You were correct, black holes are very small. They collapse on themselves constantly, which makes them very small, and their gravity is more forceful than any other known thing, and can even pull in light, this the reason why it's a black hole.
No. Supermassive black holes at the cores of galaxies have masses millions of times larger than our sun. The paper claims this one has a mass of around 10 billion suns! The characteristic radius of the black hole then works out to be about 100 times larger than the earth's orbit around the sun. "Regular" black holes only a few times more massive than the sun will be very small -- a few kilometers or so. (I'm using the term radius very loosely here, as the concept doesn't formally exist in this case, but that's a long story.)

There's a lot to say about these things (I deal with black holes for a living), but I don't like writing as much as taog apparently does .
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