【】

The mass of the biggest black holes is unimaginable.

Even a small black hole is extraordinarily dense and massive. If Earth was (hypothetically) crushed into a black hole, it would be under an inch across. Yet there are black holes in the universe bigger than our solar system, and bigger than the giant Andromeda galaxy.

Prime Day deals you can shop right now

• iRobot Roomba Combo i3+ Self-Emptying Robot Vacuum and Mop—$329.99(List Price $599.99)

• Samsung Galaxy Tab A9+ 10.9" 64GB Wi-Fi Tablet—$178.99(List Price $219.99)

• Apple AirPods Pro 2nd Gen With MagSafe USB-C Charging Case—$199.00(List Price $249.00)

• Eero 6 Dual-Band Mesh Wi-Fi 6 System (Router + 2 Extenders)—$149.99(List Price $199.99)

• Apple Watch Series 9 (GPS, 41mm, Midnight, S/M, Sports Band)—$299.00(List Price $399.00)

The NASA video below, recently released by the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab, shows the gargantuan size and mass of these fascinating cosmic objects. The more mass an object has, the stronger its gravitational pull. Black holes are so massive that not even light can escape.

This "new NASA animation highlights the 'super' in supermassive black holes," NASA writes. "These monsters lurk in the centers of most big galaxies, including our own Milky Way, and contain between 100,000 and tens of billions of times more mass than our Sun."

In just over 90 seconds, the animation will give you a tour of 10 black holes of increasing size.

When we see actual (and profoundly rare) images of black holes, or artistic conceptions of black holes, we don't see the lightless black hole itself, but we can see the immensely hot dust and gas rapidly spinning around the object, called an "accretion disk." Some of this material inevitably falls into the black hole, never to return; much it gets spewed back out into the cosmos, because black holes aren't efficient consumers of galactic material.

Want more scienceand tech news delivered straight to your inbox? Sign up for Mashable's Top Stories newslettertoday.

"Black holes are terrible at eating things. They are notoriously picky eaters," Douglas Gobeille, an astrophysicist and black hole researcher at the University of Rhode Island, told Mashable last year.

• He found a Milky Way black hole 50 years ago, and finally got to see it
• A black hole is destroying this object. Scientists are watching its last days.
• A speeding black hole is birthing baby stars across light years
• Yes, there are 100 million rogue black holes wandering our galaxy

One of the first black holes in the comparison video is Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. It's as massive as some 4.3 million suns. The video ends with TON 618, which carries the weight of over 60 billionsolar masses.

While black holes can be extremely massive and powerful, there's no reason to fear them, especially the far-off black holes in other far-off galaxies.

"We tend to anthropomorphize these things," astrophysicist Misty Bentz told Mashable following the first image ever taken of a black hole. "But really, black holes aren’t evil, mean, or scary. They just… are."

最新评论