In the last month astronomers have broken records, they have found both the largest and the smallest Black Holes in the universe, at least so far. The largest Black Hole is 40 billion solar masses plus or minus 800 million.
A 40-BILLION SOLAR MASS BLACK HOLE IN THE CENTRAL GALAXY OF ABELL 85 <https://arxiv.org/pdf/1907.10608.pdf> Even more interesting is the discovery of the smallest Black Hole, it's probably 3.3 solar masses although it could be as large as 6.1 or as small as 2.6. A low-mass black hole–giant star binary system <https://www.sciencemagazinedigital.org/sciencemagazine/01_november_2019/MobilePagedArticle.action?articleId=1534474#articleId1534474> There are theoretical reasons to think a non-rotating Neutron Star can't get any more massive than 2.16 solar masses before it collapses into a Black Hole (unless Quark Stars made of Strange Matter exist), although they might be as massive as 2.7 solar masses if they're spinning close to the speed of light. But If a Neutron Star were spinning that fast it would have a huge magnetic field which would slow it down so it couldn't keep that rate of spin for long, astronomically speaking. Magnetars might be Neutron Stars of that sort, and short lifetime might be why they're so rare, only 23 have ever been discovered. The most massive Neutron Star ever observed is 2.14 solar masses, very close to the theoretical limit. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv2D8kgUpzkxDhYestU3%2BEm-6N3-f9UcTjKSb00UPiW45w%40mail.gmail.com.
