this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2023
90 points (97.9% liked)

Astronomy

3988 readers
35 users here now

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

The largest Black Hole compared to Our Solar System

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's the thing about black holes that always blows my mind. I don't understand how the larger a black hole is, the less dense that it is. In my mind, I always think of black holes as super dense objects containing so much matter in such a little space that the gravity is crazy strong. How can something so not dense be a black hole? It doesn't make sense to me!

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

To be fair, the density is calculated from the event horizon, which is a somewhat arbitrary boundary. All the mass is still concentrated at the singularity which is still infinitely dense, just... a bit more so.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Ah, I didn't realize that. I guess that's a little more terrifying. Sounds like you could pass the event horizon and not be instantly crushed, but would have no way of ever escaping. You'd just eventually get sucked into the singularity.