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From Super to Ultra: Just How Big Can Black Holes Get?

Page Last Updated: March 24th, 2014
Page Editor: Brooke Boen

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A large elliptical galaxy at the center of the galaxy cluster PKS 0745-19. (X-ray: NASA/CXC/Stanford/Hlavacek-Larrondo, J. et al; Optical: NASA/STScI)
View large image Some of the biggest black holes in the Universe may actually be even bigger than previously thought, according to a study using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory.

Astronomers have long known about the class of the largest black holes, which they call "supermassive" black holes. Typically, these black holes, located at the centers of galaxies, have masses ranging between a few million and a few billion times that of our sun.

This analysis has looked at the brightest galaxies in a sample of 18 galaxy clusters, to target the largest black holes. The work suggests that at least ten of the galaxies contain an ultramassive black hole, weighing between 10 and 40 billion times the mass of the sun. Astronomers refer to black holes of this size as "ultramassive" black holes and only know of a few confirmed examples.

"Our results show that there may be many more ultramassive black holes in the universe than previously thought," said study leader Julie Hlavacek-Larrondo of Stanford University and formerly of Cambridge University in the UK.

The researchers estimated the masses of the black holes in the sample by using an established relationship between masses of black holes, and the amount of X-rays and radio waves they generate. This relationship, called the fundamental plane of black hole activity, fits the data on black holes with masses ranging from 10 solar masses to a billion solar masses.

The black hole masses derived by Hlavacek-Larrondo and her colleagues were about ten times larger than those derived from standard relationships between black hole mass and the properties of their host galaxy. One of these relationships involves a correlation between the black hole mass and the infrared luminosity of the central region, or bulge, of the galaxy.

"These results may mean we don't really understand how the very biggest black holes coexist with their host galaxies," said co-author Andrew Fabian of Cambridge University. "It looks like the behavior of these huge black holes has to differ from that of their less massive cousins in an important way."

All of the potential ultramassive black holes found in this study lie in galaxies at the centers of massive galaxy clusters containing huge amounts of hot gas. Outbursts powered by the central black holes are needed to prevent this hot gas from cooling and forming enormous numbers of stars. To power the outbursts, the black holes must swallow large amounts of mass, in the form of hot gas. Because the largest black holes can swallow the most mass and power the biggest outbursts, ultramassive black holes had already been predicted to exist, to explain some of the most powerful outbursts seen. The extreme environment experienced by these galaxies may explain why the standard relations for estimating black hole masses do not apply.

These results can only be confirmed by making detailed mass estimates of the black holes in this sample, by observing and modeling the motion of stars or gas in the vicinity of the black holes. Such a study has been carried out for the black hole in the center of the galaxy M87, the central galaxy in the Virgo Cluster, the nearest galaxy cluster to earth. The mass of M87's black hole, as estimated from the motion of the stars, is significantly higher than the estimate using infrared data, approximately matching the correction in black hole mass estimated by the authors of this Chandra study.

"Our next step is to measure the mass of these monster black holes in a similar way to M87, and confirm they are ultramassive. I wouldn't be surprised if we end up finding the biggest black holes in the Universe," said Hlavacek-Larrondo. "If our results are confirmed, they will have important ramifications for understanding the formation and evolution of black holes across cosmic time."

In addition to the X-rays from Chandra, the new study also uses radio data from the NSF's Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (JVLA) and the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) and infrared data from the 2 Micron All-Sky Survey (2MASS).

These results were published in the July 2012 issue of The Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls Chandra's science and flight operations from Cambridge, Mass.

More information, including images and other multimedia, can be found at:

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The ultimate action-packed science and technology magazine bursting with exciting information about the universe
More stories to check out before you go
Live Science is supported by its audience. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s why you can trust us .
A supermassive black hole is racing across the universe at 110,000 mph (177,000 km/h), and the astronomers who spotted it don't know why.
The fast-moving black hole , which is roughly 3 million times heavier than our sun, is zipping through the center of the galaxy J0437+2456, about 230 million light-years away.
Scientists have long theorized that black holes could move, but such movement is rare because their giant mass requires an equally enormous force to get them going.
"We don't expect the majority of supermassive black holes to be moving; they're usually content to just sit around," Dominic Pesce, study leader and astronomer at the Harvard and Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said in a statement .
To begin their search for this infrequent cosmic occurrence, the researchers compared the velocities of 10 supermassive black holes with the galaxies they formed the centre of , focusing on the black holes with water inside their accretion disks — the spiral-shaped collections of cosmic material in orbit around the black holes.
Why water? As water orbits a black hole, it collides with other material, and the electrons surrounding the hydrogen and oxygen atoms that make up water molecules get excited to higher energy levels. When these electrons return to their ground state, they emit a beam of laser-like microwave radiation called a maser.
By taking advantage of a cosmic phenomenon known as red-shift, in which objects moving away have their light stretched to longer (and therefore redder) wavelengths, the astronomers were able to observe the extent to which the maser light from the accretion disk was shifted away from its known frequency when stationary, and thereby gauge the speed of the moving black hole.
They took more observations from various telescopes and combined them all together using a technique called very long baseline interferometry (VLBI); with this technique, the researchers could combine the images from several telescopes to effectively act like an image captured by a very big telescope, about the size of the distance between them. In that way, the scientists could precisely measure the velocity of the black holes it had originated from.
One of the telescopes the researchers used for the experiment was the Arecibo Observatory, which has since been decommissioned after the instrument platform crashed into the telescope's disk in December 2020.
Of the 10 black holes they measured, nine were at rest, and one was on the move. Though 110,000 mph (177,000 km/h) is pretty fast, it’s not the fastest supermassive black hole. Scientists previously clocked a supermassive black hole hurtling through space at 5 million mph (7.2 million km/h), they reported in 2017 in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics .
The researchers don't know what could have made such a heavy object move at such a high speed, but they came up with two possibilities.
"We may be observing the aftermath of two supermassive black holes merging," Jim Condon, a radio astronomer at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, said in a statement . "The result of such a merger can cause the newborn black hole to recoil, and we may be watching it in the act of recoiling or as it settles down again."
The other possibility is considered by astronomers to be much rarer and more novel: The supermassive black hole may be part of a pair with another black hole that’s invisible to their measurements.
"Despite every expectation that they really ought to be out there in some abundance, scientists have had a hard time identifying clear examples of binary supermassive black holes," Pesce said. "What we could be seeing in the galaxy J0437+2456 is one of the black holes in such a pair, with the other remaining hidden to our radio observations because of its lack of maser emission."
If the black hole is being tugged around by an even bigger, invisible one, this could explain why it's traveling so fast, but more observations will be needed to get to the bottom of the mystery.
The group published its findings online March 12 in The Astrophysical Journal .
Originally published on Live Science.
Ben Turner is a U.K. based staff writer at Live Science. He covers physics and astronomy, among other topics like tech and climate change. He graduated from University College London with a degree in particle physics before training as a journalist. When he's not writing, Ben enjoys reading literature, playing the guitar and embarrassing himself with chess.
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The ultimate action-packed science and technology magazine bursting with exciting information about the universe
More stories to check out before you go
Live Science is supported by its audience. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s why you can trust us .
A supermassive black hole is racing across the universe at 110,000 mph (177,000 km/h), and the astronomers who spotted it don't know why.
The fast-moving black hole , which is roughly 3 million times heavier than our sun, is zipping through the center of the galaxy J0437+2456, about 230 million light-years away.
Scientists have long theorized that black holes could move, but such movement is rare because their giant mass requires an equally enormous force to get them going.
"We don't expect the majority of supermassive black holes to be moving; they're usually content to just sit around," Dominic Pesce, study leader and astronomer at the Harvard and Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said in a statement .
To begin their search for this infrequent cosmic occurrence, the researchers compared the velocities of 10 supermassive black holes with the galaxies they formed the centre of , focusing on the black holes with water inside their accretion disks — the spiral-shaped collections of cosmic material in orbit around the black holes.
Why water? As water orbits a black hole, it collides with other material, and the electrons surrounding the hydrogen and oxygen atoms that make up water molecules get excited to higher energy levels. When these electrons return to their ground state, they emit a beam of laser-like microwave radiation called a maser.
By taking advantage of a cosmic phenomenon known as red-shift, in which objects moving away have their light stretched to longer (and therefore redder) wavelengths, the astronomers were able to observe the extent to which the maser light from the accretion disk was shifted away from its known frequency when stationary, and thereby gauge the speed of the moving black hole.
They took more observations from various telescopes and combined them all together using a technique called very long baseline interferometry (VLBI); with this technique, the researchers could combine the images from several telescopes to effectively act like an image captured by a very big telescope, about the size of the distance between them. In that way, the scientists could precisely measure the velocity of the black holes it had originated from.
One of the telescopes the researchers used for the experiment was the Arecibo Observatory, which has since been decommissioned after the instrument platform crashed into the telescope's disk in December 2020.
Of the 10 black holes they measured, nine were at rest, and one was on the move. Though 110,000 mph (177,000 km/h) is pretty fast, it’s not the fastest supermassive black hole. Scientists previously clocked a supermassive black hole hurtling through space at 5 million mph (7.2 million km/h), they reported in 2017 in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics .
The researchers don't know what could have made such a heavy object move at such a high speed, but they came up with two possibilities.
"We may be observing the aftermath of two supermassive black holes merging," Jim Condon, a radio astronomer at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, said in a statement . "The result of such a merger can cause the newborn black hole to recoil, and we may be watching it in the act of recoiling or as it settles down again."
The other possibility is considered by astronomers to be much rarer and more novel: The supermassive black hole may be part of a pair with another black hole that’s invisible to their measurements.
"Despite every expectation that they really ought to be out there in some abundance, scientists have had a hard time identifying clear examples of binary supermassive black holes," Pesce said. "What we could be seeing in the galaxy J0437+2456 is one of the black holes in such a pair, with the other remaining hidden to our radio observations because of its lack of maser emission."
If the black hole is being tugged around by an even bigger, invisible one, this could explain why it's traveling so fast, but more observations will
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