The giant elliptical galaxy Messier 87 has a black hole two to three times larger than imagined, measuring about 6.9 billion times the mass of the sun.
"I am getting a little suspicious that some of the (computer) models in the past are wrong," University of Texas astronomer Karl Gebhardt told reporters at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Pasadena, Calif., this week. "This has implications for black holes in the other galaxies that have been measured."
Situated roughly 50 million light-years from Earth, M87 is the largest and brightest galaxy within the Virgo Cluster and one of the most well-studied objects in the universe. Of all the relatively nearby galaxies, M87 is the biggest and it has the biggest black hole.
Gebhardt and colleagues used one of the world's most powerful supercomputers to fold in previously uncalculated attributes of the galaxy, including its so-called "dark halo" -- a spherical region beyond the galaxy's visible structures that contains dark matter gravitationally tied to the object.
It's So Massive
This artist's impression released by the European Space Agency illustrates the tremendous gravitational pull of a giant black hole (dark circle lower-R) on a passing star (R). Astronomers revealed how they used a supercomputer to show that a nearby black hole is vastly more massive than scientists ever imagined.
gonk we are going to be eated !!!!!!..*run in panic xD*
