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> 3.5 billion light-years from Earth > mass falls between 10 and 100 million suns The size of the sun already causes my brain to shut down. Everything about t

> 3.5 billion light-years from Earth > mass falls between 10 and 100 million suns The size of the sun already causes my brain to shut down. Everything about this is beyond contemplation.

lgl 3y ago
The article states that even though it's roughly in the direction of a galaxy cluster that's 3.5 billion light years away, further observations by JWST found it to in fact be some staggering 13.2 billion light years away. From the article: > The extremely distant black hole is located in the galaxy UHZ1 in the direction of the galaxy cluster Abell 2744. The galaxy cluster is about 3.5 billion light-years from Earth. Webb data, however, reveal that UHZ1 is much farther away than Abell 2744. At some 13.2 billion light-years away, UHZ1 is seen when the universe was only 3% of its current age.
- omnicognate 3y ago
  Hah, my mind is proportionally more blown then.
- ustamills 3y ago
  Wow, if we're seeing it that far in the past I wonder if maybe it's large enough to have eaten the universe already and we just don't know it yet.
  - pdonis 3y ago
    Black holes don't "eat" surrounding objects. Their gravity is no different from the gravity of any other object of the same mass. This hole has a mass between 10 and 100 million solar masses; that's about the size of a dwarf galaxy. So its gravity would be no stronger than a similarly sized dwarf galaxy. We are in no danger of having the universe eaten by dwarf galaxies.
  - hn8305823 3y ago
    If the Sun were replaced by one solar mass black hole, we would freeze/starve to death but the Earth's orbit would be just as stable as it is now. In fact Earth might survive (as an ice planet) much longer than it would around the Sun since the Sun is expected to become a red giant and possibly swallow the Earth when it dies.
    - dreamcompiler 3y ago
      If the Moon were replaced by a black hole of its same mass, we wouldn't even notice except that the night sky would become moonless and we wouldn't have eclipses any more. The tides would keep happening as usual.
      - z3phyr 3y ago
        It will evaporate relatively immediately. So no tides.
        limbicsystem 3y ago
        It will take longer than the age of the universe to evaporate. So tides. For a while.
      - dotancohen 3y ago
        Moonlight is actually a very important influence in many natural cycles, all of which would be disrupted. And as a motivator for both our intellectual curiosity and our scientific curiosity, the lack of a detailed moon in our night sky would have retarded the development of human civilization.
basementcat 3y ago
"Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space." -Douglas Adams
- paulrouget 3y ago
  If you consider the observable universe as the upper limit and the plank length as the lower limit, we're much closer to the observable universe (10^-35 meters -> 10^27). One could argue that Plank length is not the most best lower limit.
  - fsckboy 3y ago
    Planck the scientist? The Planck length is 10 to the −20 times the diameter of a proton. Why are we using something so small to talk about galactic distances?
    - eagle2com 3y ago
      We are using it as another point in the comparison between our everyday lives scale, and the extremes of our universe. It turns out, as beings living in the 10^0m scale, we are much closer to the size of the universe 10^27, than to the smallest possible distance, 10^-35. Which boggles my mind, I did not imagine the Planck length to be this small, if it even makes sense to use the word "imagine".
      - seanw444 3y ago
        That is actually fascinating.
        fsckboy 3y ago
        "yes! thus," i suggest, "my comment asking the question that led to this should not be at -4! i feel like my comment got crushed in the collapse of a star!"
Tommstein 3y ago
What breaks my brain is that if the Sun were compressed into a black hole, its Schwarzschild radius would be less than 2 miles, but the biggest black hole we know about so far, Phoenix A, has a Schwarzschild radius of almost 2,000 AU. The radius of Neptune's orbit is "only" about 30 AU, so Phoenix A's Schwarzschild radius is almost 70 times longer. Illustration here: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d3/Phoenix_A_compared_to_Ton_618_and_the_Orbit_of_Neptune.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d3/Phoenix_... . And of course, volume increases cubically with radius. I have a hard time contemplating that you could make a black hole that ridiculously ginormous even if you crammed the entire universe into one black hole, and yet Phoenix A is far from the only supermassive black hole out there.
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- pdonis 3y ago
  > volume increases cubically with radius This intuition does not work in curved spacetime, particularly not for black holes. Black holes do not even have a well-defined volume at all.
  - denton-scratch 3y ago
    Well, a sphere with some Schwarzschild radius has a volume. I was uncomfortable with the conflation of the "volume of a black hole" with the volume of that sphere.
    - pdonis 3y ago
      > a sphere with some Schwarzschild radius ...is not what a black hole is. It is not even "something kinda sorta like a sphere with some Schwarzschild radius". It is nothing like any ordinary object you're used to. It doesn't have a well-defined "radius" any more than it has a well-defined volume; the Schwarzschild "radius" is actually sqrt(A / 4 pi), where A is the surface area of the hole's horizon (which in turn is calculated from the mass of the hole).
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layer8 3y ago
Once you get used to log scale, things become much more manageable.
- contravariant 3y ago
  Be sure to switch back when someone asks you to guess their weight or age though. Most people don't appreciate it when you're off by one in logarithmic scale.
  - layer8 3y ago
    They may be flattered as long as you don’t tell them that it’s log scale. On another note, our senses generally work on a log scale (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weber–Fechner_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weber–Fechner_law), so it’s not something unnatural.
    - _jal 3y ago
      > our senses generally work on a log scale, so it’s not something unnatural. Where confusion creeps back in is when sensory input is quantified. People don't perceive a 1000 lumen source as twice as bright as a 500 lumen source, but tend to think they should.
conductr 3y ago
Same, time is like that too. I’m not an sure if this video is entirely accurate but the scale of time and how infantile our current entire universe along with how it’s evolution is depicted can be difficult for me to comprehend https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uD4izuDMUQA https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uD4izuDMUQA
dreamcompiler 3y ago
The Sun isn't even very big as stars go. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=M4M6wlBjU38&pp https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=M4M6wlBjU38&pp
1letterunixname 3y ago
Switch to log10 scale and Plank units then. ;]

> 3.5 billion light-years from Earth > mass falls between 10 and 100 million suns The size of the sun already causes my brain to shut down. Everything about this is beyond contemplation.

lgl 3y ago

The article states that even though it's roughly in the direction of a galaxy cluster that's 3.5 billion light years away, further observations by JWST found it to in fact be some staggering 13.2 billion light years away. From the article: > The extremely distant black hole is located in the galaxy UHZ1 in the direction of the galaxy cluster Abell 2744. The galaxy cluster is about 3.5 billion light-years from Earth. Webb data, however, reveal that UHZ1 is much farther away than Abell 2744. At some 13.2 billion light-years away, UHZ1 is seen when the universe was only 3% of its current age.

omnicognate 3y ago
Hah, my mind is proportionally more blown then.
ustamills 3y ago
Wow, if we're seeing it that far in the past I wonder if maybe it's large enough to have eaten the universe already and we just don't know it yet.
- pdonis 3y ago
  Black holes don't "eat" surrounding objects. Their gravity is no different from the gravity of any other object of the same mass. This hole has a mass between 10 and 100 million solar masses; that's about the size of a dwarf galaxy. So its gravity would be no stronger than a similarly sized dwarf galaxy. We are in no danger of having the universe eaten by dwarf galaxies.
- hn8305823 3y ago
  If the Sun were replaced by one solar mass black hole, we would freeze/starve to death but the Earth's orbit would be just as stable as it is now. In fact Earth might survive (as an ice planet) much longer than it would around the Sun since the Sun is expected to become a red giant and possibly swallow the Earth when it dies.
  - dreamcompiler 3y ago
    If the Moon were replaced by a black hole of its same mass, we wouldn't even notice except that the night sky would become moonless and we wouldn't have eclipses any more. The tides would keep happening as usual.
    - z3phyr 3y ago
      It will evaporate relatively immediately. So no tides.
      - limbicsystem 3y ago
        It will take longer than the age of the universe to evaporate. So tides. For a while.
    - dotancohen 3y ago
      Moonlight is actually a very important influence in many natural cycles, all of which would be disrupted. And as a motivator for both our intellectual curiosity and our scientific curiosity, the lack of a detailed moon in our night sky would have retarded the development of human civilization.

basementcat 3y ago

"Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space." -Douglas Adams

paulrouget 3y ago
If you consider the observable universe as the upper limit and the plank length as the lower limit, we're much closer to the observable universe (10^-35 meters -> 10^27). One could argue that Plank length is not the most best lower limit.
- fsckboy 3y ago
  Planck the scientist? The Planck length is 10 to the −20 times the diameter of a proton. Why are we using something so small to talk about galactic distances?
  - eagle2com 3y ago
    We are using it as another point in the comparison between our everyday lives scale, and the extremes of our universe. It turns out, as beings living in the 10^0m scale, we are much closer to the size of the universe 10^27, than to the smallest possible distance, 10^-35. Which boggles my mind, I did not imagine the Planck length to be this small, if it even makes sense to use the word "imagine".
    - seanw444 3y ago
      That is actually fascinating.
      - fsckboy 3y ago
        "yes! thus," i suggest, "my comment asking the question that led to this should not be at -4! i feel like my comment got crushed in the collapse of a star!"

Tommstein 3y ago

What breaks my brain is that if the Sun were compressed into a black hole, its Schwarzschild radius would be less than 2 miles, but the biggest black hole we know about so far, Phoenix A, has a Schwarzschild radius of almost 2,000 AU. The radius of Neptune's orbit is "only" about 30 AU, so Phoenix A's Schwarzschild radius is almost 70 times longer. Illustration here: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d3/Phoenix_A_compared_to_Ton_618_and_the_Orbit_of_Neptune.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d3/Phoenix_... . And of course, volume increases cubically with radius. I have a hard time contemplating that you could make a black hole that ridiculously ginormous even if you crammed the entire universe into one black hole, and yet Phoenix A is far from the only supermassive black hole out there.

deleted 3y ago
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pdonis 3y ago
> volume increases cubically with radius This intuition does not work in curved spacetime, particularly not for black holes. Black holes do not even have a well-defined volume at all.
- denton-scratch 3y ago
  Well, a sphere with some Schwarzschild radius has a volume. I was uncomfortable with the conflation of the "volume of a black hole" with the volume of that sphere.
  - pdonis 3y ago
    > a sphere with some Schwarzschild radius ...is not what a black hole is. It is not even "something kinda sorta like a sphere with some Schwarzschild radius". It is nothing like any ordinary object you're used to. It doesn't have a well-defined "radius" any more than it has a well-defined volume; the Schwarzschild "radius" is actually sqrt(A / 4 pi), where A is the surface area of the hole's horizon (which in turn is calculated from the mass of the hole).

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layer8 3y ago

Once you get used to log scale, things become much more manageable.

contravariant 3y ago
Be sure to switch back when someone asks you to guess their weight or age though. Most people don't appreciate it when you're off by one in logarithmic scale.
- layer8 3y ago
  They may be flattered as long as you don’t tell them that it’s log scale. On another note, our senses generally work on a log scale (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weber–Fechner_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weber–Fechner_law), so it’s not something unnatural.
  - _jal 3y ago
    > our senses generally work on a log scale, so it’s not something unnatural. Where confusion creeps back in is when sensory input is quantified. People don't perceive a 1000 lumen source as twice as bright as a 500 lumen source, but tend to think they should.

conductr 3y ago

Same, time is like that too. I’m not an sure if this video is entirely accurate but the scale of time and how infantile our current entire universe along with how it’s evolution is depicted can be difficult for me to comprehend https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uD4izuDMUQA https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uD4izuDMUQA

dreamcompiler 3y ago

The Sun isn't even very big as stars go. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=M4M6wlBjU38&pp https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=M4M6wlBjU38&pp

1letterunixname 3y ago

Switch to log10 scale and Plank units then. ;]