supermassive black holes
Galaxy-anchoring gravitational monsters
Supermassive black holes are black holes with masses millions to billions of times that of the sun, found at the centers of most large galaxies including our own Milky Way.
Unlike stellar black holes formed from collapsed stars, supermassive black holes likely formed through different processes in the early universe.
When actively consuming matter, they power quasars—the brightest objects in the cosmos.
- galactic centerDense hub of stars
- event horizonBlack hole's edge
- point of no returnThreshold beyond which reversal impossible
- general relativityGravity as curved spacetime
- redshiftWavelength stretch from recession
Schwarzschild radius · astrophysics · spaghettification · gravity well · cosmology · spacetime · gravitational waves · quasar · gravitational lensing · neutron star · singularity · galactic core · mass · dark matter · tidal forces · magnetic fields · Stephen Hawking · angular momentum
- Galaxiesgalaxy, galaxies, Milky Way, spiral galaxy, Andromeda
- AGNquasars, torus, jets
- stellar motionorbit, trajectory, orbital velocity, angular momentum, orbital mechanics
supermassive black holessubatomic particles
Components smaller than atoms
photons · asteroids · neutrinos · dust particles · electrons
supermassive black holesquasars
Extremely luminous galactic centers
supernovae · stars · galaxies · pulsars · white dwarfs
massive, supermassive, massed, massing, masses, massively, massiveness, blacken, blackened