Gigantic black hole could be just the 'tip of an iceberg'
Nothing makes you feel quite as insignificant as the fact that there are supermassive black holes out there snacking on stars and weighing, oh, 17 billion times the weight of our sun. One such supermassive black hole, discovered recently by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the Gemini Telescope in Hawaii, might indicate that there are actually whole crowds of such supermassive black holes in the universe — or at least far more than we once believed.
Usually the biggest black holes, with masses of about 10 billion times the weight of our sun, are discovered at the heart of very large galaxies in crowded regions of the universe. But the gargantuan supermassive black hole found by NASA actually exists in a quiet, remote section of space:
Feeling tiny yet?
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Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.
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