WORLD'S LARGEST BLACK HOLE
THE LONGEST LIST OF THE LONGEST STUFF AT THE LONGEST DOMAIN NAME AT LONG LAST

What is the largest black hole?

For many objects that hold the title of “world’s largest”, one must search far and wide to find them. But, in order to find the world’s largest black hole, you’ll need to travel 3.5 billion light years away. Or you could just trust us that this is in fact, the world’s largest black hole.

The largest black hole in the universe lurks in the quasar known as OJ287. A quasar is a very bright object in the universe that has a black hole in the middle of it. Matter whirls into the center of the quasar and as it does this, it emits high levels of radiation. Inside the quasar that is OJ287, there are actually two black holes. Because scientists and astronomers could measure the smaller of the two black holes, this allowed them to also weigh the larger of the two. The larger black hole, which has been found to be the largest black hole in the universe, weighs approximately 18 billion times more than the Sun.

But the ‘small’ black hole inside quasar OJ287 is quite large itself, weighing 100 million times more than the Sun. This smaller black hole circles the larger black hole every 12 years, following the same oval pattern the entire time it’s in orbit. Around the larger black hole is a circle of matter, and every now and then the smaller black hole gets close enough to disrupt this matter. Once this happens, the matter bursts and causes quasar OJ287 to become even brighter than it normally is.

OJ287