How big is a black hole? How messily it 'eats' may be a clue.

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Astronomers think they have established a new way to calculate the of supermassive black holes: by studying the feeding patterns of these invisible giants.

How big is a black hole? How messily it 'eats' may be a clue. : Read more

 

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I note in the article, "To examine any connection between supermassive black hole size and the flickering light of the disk it feeds from, the scientists began by selecting 67 of these behemoths, each with a previously estimated mass of between 10,000 and 10 billion times that of our sun. (Supermassive black holes are much larger than stellar black holes, which form from a single star exploding and have masses of three to 10 times that of our sun.)"

A SMBH with one billion solar masses, could have a diameter about 39.48 au. The light-travel time across a SMBH this large is 19,700 seconds. This is based upon the Schwarzschild radius of black hole equation. Even a SMBH with some 39 au diameter, has a tiny angular size in the sky when measured. At 100 Mpc, close to 3.94 x 10^-4 mas angular size.