Giant black holes were supposed to be bit players in the early cosmic story. But recent James Webb Space Telescope observations are finding an unexpected abundance of the beasts.

  • WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    I thought so too but apparently the length of time it takes a black hole to evaporate is based on mass and those with a low mass — as in, the mass of the moon — should have already evaporated. Only supermassive black holes are the ones likely to take a google years to evaporate.

    Edit: none of the ones pictured are that small. We probably couldn’t detect them for hundreds/thousands of years (e.g. until solar system sized telescopes).

    • chimerical@toast.ooo
      1·
      1 year ago

      According to this calculator a black hole the size of the moon would take 584,745,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years. I’m always open to correction though. (5.84745E44)