Our Solar System vs. the Biggest Black Hole Ever Found
Well, this is humbling! TON 618, the largest known black hole, is 66 billion times the mass of our Sun and a diameter 30–40 times wider than our entire solar system.To put that into perspective, if our entire solar system (including the distant Oort Cloud) were placed next to it, it would be completely swallowed within its gravitational abyss. Nothing, not even light, escapes once it crosses the boundary.
And here’s the mind-blowing part: The light we see from TON 618 has been traveling for over 18.2 billion years just to reach us. That means this cosmic monster existed long before Earth even formed. The universe doesn’t just make us feel small; it redefines what “big” even means. From Quarks to Quasars
Astronomers have discovered strong evidence for the closest supermassive black hole outside of the Milky Way galaxy. This giant black hole is located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, one of the nearest galactic neighbors to our own.
Hypervelocity stars are created when a double-star system ventures too close to a supermassive black hole. The intense gravitational pull from the black hole rips the two stars apart, capturing one star into a close orbit around it. Meanwhile, the other orphaned star is jettisoned away at speeds exceeding several million miles per hour—and a hypervelocity star is born.
Using the speeds of the stars and the relative number of ones ejected by the LMC and Milky Way supermassive black holes, the team determined that the mass of the LMC black hole is about 600,000 times the mass of the sun. For comparison, the supermassive black hole in the Milky Way has about 4 million solar masses. Elsewhere in the universe, there are supermassive black holes with billions of times more mass than the sun.
Runaway stars reveal hidden black hole in Milky Way’s nearest neighbor
What damage would one of those hypervelocity stars do to the solar system passing through at 2000 miles per second?
In his paper, Loeb proposes how an advanced civilization could rely on the latter process by engineering a black hole that would orbit its home planet. This black hole would be very small, weighing just one hundred thousand tons (1011 g).
If left unchecked, this black hole would evaporate in just a year and a half through the emission of Hawking Radiation. But as Loeb told Universe Today via email, it could be maintained by accreting relatively small amounts of matter (2.2 kg; 4.85 lbs) onto it per second. In exchange, it would provide an endless supply of power:
“This black hole system is the most efficient engine that I ever thought about. The fuel is converted to energy with the perfect efficiency of 100%, because the mass falling into the black hole is ultimately coming out as Hawking radiation. I have not seen this idea discussed before and had a “Eureka moment” when I realized it a few weeks ago. The only other method for converting mass to radiation with 100% efficiency is matter-antimatter annihilation.”
Professor proposes how a black hole in orbit around a planet could be a sign of an advanced civilization
Straight out of science fiction it seems but an idea based in reality. Truth is definitely stranger than fiction. Nothing is as it seems.
Basically every image generated by the James Webb Space Telescope contains enough data to spend an entire career studying. A new study analyzing 263 galaxies in the JADES field captured by Webb has turned up a completely unexpected finding with deep implications for the origin of the universe and the methods astronomers use to measure cosmic distances. The finding is simple: The vast majority, two-thirds, of galaxies in the universe are spinning clockwise. The other third are spinning counterclockwise (or “Australiawise”).
“The analysis of the galaxies was done by quantitative analysis of their shapes, but the difference is so obvious that any person looking at the image can see it,”
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) pays for itself with this. I did not expect this.
Δx Δp = (Atorus) / (4π ℓpl2) ħ.
This equation, simple yet profound, tells us that what we have long regarded as uncertainty is, in fact, structure. The apparent randomness of quantum mechanics is not a defect of nature but a signature of an underlying order.
There is something universal about the spiral, something embedded in the way energy, matter and space evolve. The torus is not merely a shape; it is the embodiment of motion, of evolution, of time itself.
1\137, fine structure constant, Anthropic Principle and existence. It is turtles all the way down.
