How big can 'ultramassive' black holes get? Scientists may have the answer

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Scientists may have discovered a limit to how massive black holes can grow. If they're right, we may have already discovered the largest possible ultramassive black hole!

How big can 'ultramassive' black holes get? Scientists may have the answer : Read more

 

[m4n8tpr8b]

You quote the researcher defining supermassive and ultramassive black holes as more than 10 million resp. 10 billion solar masses, but also that "ultramassive black holes would, on average, be 10,000 times more massive than supermassive black holes." That's a contradiction (10,000 would be the ratio of the heaviest ultramassive black holes and the lightest supermassive ones, not the average ones), but I suspect just a few zeroes were misplaced somewhere.

In fact, to my knowledge, supermassive black holes are defined as more than 100,000 solar masses (a hundredth of what's written in the article), but it certainly cannot be higher than 1 million (our own supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy, Sagittarius A*, is 4 million). Given that with the 100,000 definition, supermassive black holes cover a much wider range (the largest being 10,000 times the smallest, while for ultramassive ones, it's just 10 times), the 10,000 ratio for average ultramassive and supermassive black holes could hold.