Heavyweight black hole is a record breaker

• 17 October 2007

by David Shiga  

A black hole as heavy as almost 16 Suns has set a new weight record for black holes that form from collapsing stars. Its discovery suggests that there may be even heavier ones lurking out there, spawned in the death throes of the universe’s most massive stars.

When a very massive star ends its life, its outer layers explode outwards, forming a supernova, while its core collapses to form a black hole. There are limits to the size of the so-called stellar-mass black holes born this way, not least because there is only so much matter available from the parent star.

Until now, all the black holes formed this way whose mass has been precisely measured turn out to weigh in at 10 Suns or less. Some astronomers had proposed that this might be the upper limit via this route. Heavier black holes weighing millions of Suns can be found at the centres of galaxies, but these are probably formed in a different, if still mysterious, way.

what if this black hole is the entrance to hell ?

probably not, but here is the link for the rest of the story:

http://space.newscientist.com/article/mg19626264.200-heavyweight-black-hole-is-a-record-breaker.html