Is there something even more terrifying waiting for us in the depths of space?
There is an enormous black hole in the center of our galaxy. Although it is millions of times heavier, it is as wide as our Sun. The interstellar gas and dust surrounding it are stirred by its strong gravitational attraction. The central engine of the Milky Way, this supermassive black hole has shaped our galaxy’s birth and growth over the course of its 13 billion years and contributed to the emergence of solar systems similar to our own. Every now and again a star gets too close and gets torn apart, disappearing from the universe forever.
With the ability to create and destroy on an immense scale, it is a scary beast.
Supermassive black holes, like as ours, dubbed Sagittarius A*, are the center of almost every major galaxy, but in the scale of things, ours is a mere featherweight. Ultramassive black holes are substantially larger black holes that have been found by astronomers in the last ten years. Some are enormous enough to span the entire width of our solar system, and some are 1,000 times more massive than Sagittarius A*.
We are also learning new things about how these enormous creatures formed at the beginning of time because of the James Webb Space Telescope’s (JWST) unmatched view. But there are just as many unanswered questions, such as how big and where they originated.
