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50 Billion Suns! What is the Size The Biggest Single Object?

dailygalaxy.com — Scientists have determined the mass of the largest things that could possibly exist in our universe, and they don't appear in the Oprah studio audience. New results have placed an upper limit on the current size of black holes - and at fifty billion suns it's pretty damn big. T

Who dugg this? Made popular Sep 5, 2008

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  • inactive, on 09/05/2008, -4/+41Neither is Carlos Mencia.
  • fas2, on 09/04/2008, -5/+37The author is not as funny as he thinks he is.
  • bariswheel, on 09/04/2008, -1/+26The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed. - Albert Einstein
  • disparue, on 09/05/2008, -3/+17Mass doesn't equal volume/size.
  • noahgelman, on 09/05/2008, -3/+15Neither is Dane Cook
  • Hockey13, on 09/05/2008, -2/+13buried for the oprah joke

    and i bet someone will reply to me and say dugg for the oprah joke
  • inactive, on 09/05/2008, -7/+16"the largest things that could possibly exist in our universe, and they don't appear in the Oprah studio audience."

    THat was hilarious.
  • Grooblle, on 09/05/2008, -0/+9Neil Patrick Harris
  • tatical, on 09/05/2008, -0/+8"That's a hundred thousand tredagrams"

    I misread that at first as: "That's a hundred thousand teddygrahams".

    Its past my bed time...
  • GreenAlien, on 09/05/2008, -0/+8"You say it like 13.7 billion years (approximately the age of the Universe) is not a long enough period at all?"

    No, I don't think he was saying anything. Just quoting a line from the article and hoping for some diggs.
  • inactive, on 09/05/2008, -0/+7That is a huge bitch.
  • StateTheObvious, on 09/05/2008, -2/+9"the largest things that could possibly exist in our universe, and they don't appear in the Oprah studio audience."

    Of course not. She's on stage.

    Zing!
  • youannoyme, on 09/05/2008, -0/+7Hawking radiation is actually a very slow process and not what drex8 is talking about. Matter falls into a black hold via an accretion disk, where it swirls around and around before finally falling in (sort of like water going down a drain). But because of the physics of it all, for some matter to fall in, other matter must be ejected from the disk (to conserve angular momentum). I'm too lazy to get up right now and check if this is "more" than what falls in, but its substantial and energetic, and its actually how we detect black hole candidates in the first place.
  • MacBookForMe, on 09/04/2008, -2/+8Just amazing........and to sip my cappuccino on the terrace of the old historical Italian town square, and to think about artistic creations of mankind and eternity of space...before I wake up in rainy London:)
  • Sean23, on 09/05/2008, -0/+5I'm challenging "tredagrams". One tredabuck to whoever can confirm that 'treda' is an actual prefix.
  • cutright, on 09/05/2008, -0/+5Agreed... that's like quibbling over the term atomic "weight".
  • TSK05, on 09/05/2008, -1/+6Astrophysicists refer to size as if it were equal to mass very often (I would know, I am majoring in it), it's kind of like an analogy but everyone in the field knows what we mean.
  • inactive, on 09/05/2008, -1/+6Neither is Dick Cheney.
  • inactive, on 09/04/2008, -9/+13The universe has only existed for a finite amount of time, and even the most voracious black hole can only suck in matter at a certain rate.
  • XxpokemasterxX, on 09/05/2008, -3/+7dugg for the oprah joke

    and i bet someone will reply to me and say buried for the oprah joke
  • strictnein, on 09/05/2008, -0/+4Ughh... seriously. Please just leave.
  • inactive, on 09/05/2008, -0/+4How high are you right now and wtf is "be space"? D:
  • captinherb, on 09/05/2008, -0/+4That's ridiculous. A black hole would be unable to grow if that was the case. True small black holes, lighter than the moon, will evaporate due to Hawking's radiation. Anything larger will will not, at least until the cosmic background radiation stops.
  • drex8, on 09/05/2008, -1/+5Neither is Sarah Palin?


    (Man I hope I don't get the ban for that) :(
  • fracai, on 09/05/2008, -3/+7"They spew out more matter than they suck in."

    o.O

    I'll race you to the "Perpetual Motion Machine" section of the Patent Office on that one.
  • 4321234, on 09/05/2008, -0/+3Considering the extreme density of a black hole, the actual physical size might perhaps not be significantly greater than yo mama.
  • dinostabOMG, on 09/05/2008, -1/+4@fracal:

    Actually, he's right in that it's been postulated that eventually black holes dry up from leaking energy. Look up Hawking radiation.
  • jtbell04, on 09/05/2008, -2/+5Neither are any of you.
  • WalkerTXclocker, on 09/05/2008, -0/+3Well, I can infer that some ***** happens really fast and other ***** happens really slow.
  • WalkerTXclocker, on 09/05/2008, -0/+3The Jeopardy headline of course
  • VivaCalligula, on 09/05/2008, -0/+3*insert immature penis joke here*
  • TSK05, on 09/05/2008, -0/+3Yay for mentioning Eddington luminosity without every directly naming it. "but that same huge gravitational gradient means that the same matter can release huge amounts of radiation as it falls, blasting other matter further away." - you can use the Eddington luminosity equation to calculate how much matter it can be sucking in at the same time.
  • LegomanArt, on 09/05/2008, -0/+3Thank you! I was about to challenge it also. I am pretty damn sure he just made that up and should have simply stuck with a hundred thousand *****.
  • nytel, on 09/05/2008, -0/+2Send in the probes!
  • jtbell04, on 09/05/2008, -0/+2Single largest object: 4,294,967,296 suns (then it collapses to zero).
  • strictnein, on 09/05/2008, -0/+2Suck it, Trebek
  • Chris_F, on 09/05/2008, -0/+2uh, MegaSight wrote "50 Billion Suns! What is the Size The Biggest Single Object?". I think what he MEANT to sat was, What is the most massive single object.

    Remember, a black hole is ultra dense, so usually that are quite small relatively speaking, its their mass that's a real bitch.
  • TSK05, on 09/05/2008, -0/+2True :P
  • dmcbride6, on 09/05/2008, -0/+250_BILLION_SUNS * 2

    This is starting to feel like the infinite hotel here...
  • strictnein, on 09/05/2008, -0/+2I could go for some cinnamon teddy grahams.
  • thespanielator, on 09/05/2008, -1/+3If you continually flush the toilet then it'll stop raining.

    It can take a while though
  • eltrev, on 09/05/2008, -0/+2The word "Tredagram" doesn't exist, at least not on the internets.

  • JT114881, on 09/05/2008, -0/+2Is it possible for a black hole to become so big that it sucks in all matter in the universe? I mean the more it grows the more pull it has right? It seems it would pick up speed the more matter it takes in. Then again I know nothing about this subject so can someone enlighten me?
  • gu0d, on 09/05/2008, -0/+2Heavy
  • WalkerTXclocker, on 09/05/2008, -0/+2@JT114881
    Well where to begin? It could be possible if the Universe eventually stops expanding. If it doesn't stop expanding then no. Gravity still only travels at the speed of light and during inflation the Universe actually expanded faster then the speed of light, Black holes evaporate energy(although slowly) which would still act as a balance. Also 50 billion suns is still small in relation to the entire Universe. As far as the speed goes a black hole doesn't even have to move at all(not to mention that movement is relative). And this is only for a finite Universe. In the case of an infinite Universe it would be impossible just for the fact the Universe is infinite.
  • ryan83189, on 09/05/2008, -0/+2The largest "object" in the universe is the Sloan Great Wall. It is trillions of trillions of galaxies that interact with etch other's gravity, 1.37 billion light years in length and is a billion light years away. It is 3x bigger than the second largest object, The Great Wall which is 300 million light years away, and is so large that if it were rotated about it's center of mass in our direction, we would be in side of it. It is the largest object in our visible universe as we have seen as far as ~14 billion light years, after that and all we see is the universe before the big bang, as the EM radiation has not had enough time to travel to our area. There might even be more of it than we think, because we cannot see clearly through the center of our galaxy.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sloan_Great_Wall
  • skilez, on 09/05/2008, -1/+3Please die.


    ...and take your MacBook with you.
  • VivaCalligula, on 09/05/2008, -0/+2I can use tredagrams in relation to something else. Yo mama weighs 100,000 tredagrams. See, he missed that joke.
  • Neutralino, on 09/05/2008, -0/+2Yes it does. For a black hole anyway, that is. For any given black hole of mass M, we may define its "size" to be given by the radius of it's event horizon, the distance at which all light cones are bent inwards. For a non-rotating black hole, this occurs at a distance

    r = (2*G*M)/c^2

    where G is newton's constant, 6.67x10^-11 Nm^2/kg^2, and c is the speed of light, 3x10^8 m/s

    For the mass given, it is about 1.5x10^14 m, or the distance light travels in about 5.7 days
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