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 18 billion solar masses
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BigPapaSmurf
SFN Die Hard

3192 Posts

Posted - 01/10/2008 :  11:51:06  Show Profile Send BigPapaSmurf a Private Message  Reply with Quote
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7181877.stm

New data shows black hole 6 times larger than previous record holder. Though the data is 3.5billion years old. I've always wondered if there is a limit to the mass that can be absorbed by black holes, if they perhaps have some critical mass which would trigger an unknown event.

"...things I have neither seen nor experienced nor heard tell of from anybody else; things, what is more, that do not in fact exist and could not ever exist at all. So my readers must not believe a word I say." -Lucian on his book True History

"...They accept such things on faith alone, without any evidence. So if a fraudulent and cunning person who knows how to take advantage of a situation comes among them, he can make himself rich in a short time." -Lucian critical of early Christians c.166 AD From his book, De Morte Peregrini

Dave W.
Info Junkie

USA
26020 Posts

Posted - 01/10/2008 :  12:01:43   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit Dave W.'s Homepage Send Dave W. a Private Message  Reply with Quote
How many pennies is that?

- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
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BigPapaSmurf
SFN Die Hard

3192 Posts

Posted - 01/10/2008 :  12:06:59   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send BigPapaSmurf a Private Message  Reply with Quote
1.4320224 x10^43 pennies, well, post 1982 US pennies anyway.
(actual answer)

"...things I have neither seen nor experienced nor heard tell of from anybody else; things, what is more, that do not in fact exist and could not ever exist at all. So my readers must not believe a word I say." -Lucian on his book True History

"...They accept such things on faith alone, without any evidence. So if a fraudulent and cunning person who knows how to take advantage of a situation comes among them, he can make himself rich in a short time." -Lucian critical of early Christians c.166 AD From his book, De Morte Peregrini
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BigPapaSmurf
SFN Die Hard

3192 Posts

Posted - 01/10/2008 :  12:21:47   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send BigPapaSmurf a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Also if you stacked them up it would bust the universe apart trillions of times over. A stack of 1.4320224 x10^43 pennies would be 2.31 trillion, trillion lightyears high (.06inch each). I hope my math is correct cause that seems really unbelievable.

You would need a piggy bank 3.64 Billion solar volumes to hold them all, provided Gravity doesnt just crush them all into the aforementioned Black hole.

"...things I have neither seen nor experienced nor heard tell of from anybody else; things, what is more, that do not in fact exist and could not ever exist at all. So my readers must not believe a word I say." -Lucian on his book True History

"...They accept such things on faith alone, without any evidence. So if a fraudulent and cunning person who knows how to take advantage of a situation comes among them, he can make himself rich in a short time." -Lucian critical of early Christians c.166 AD From his book, De Morte Peregrini
Edited by - BigPapaSmurf on 01/10/2008 13:08:33
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Dave W.
Info Junkie

USA
26020 Posts

Posted - 01/10/2008 :  13:44:53   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit Dave W.'s Homepage Send Dave W. a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Well, I think we must consider them as a blob of pennies rather than a stack.

Okay, the Sun's mass is 1.9891×1030 kg, so the black hole's mass is 3.58038×1043 grams. A nominal post-1982 penny is 2.5 g, so the black hole is 1.432152×1043 pennies (so your math to that point checks out).

Each penny is nominally 0.3486 cm3, but that doesn't include the spaces between them in an assumed-to-be-optimal (but not crushed by gravity) packing. The space actually taken up by each penny would be about 0.48714 cm3.

So we're looking at a total volume of 6.9766×1042 cm3, or 6.9766×1036 m3. As a sphere, this big blob of pennies would have a radius of 1.1854×109 km, so it would fit within the orbit of Saturn with over 10% wiggle room (but it would swallow up the Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, the asteroid belt and Jupiter).

At the surface, acceleration due to gravity would be about 1,700,712 m/s2, or nearly 174 thousand times stronger than Earth's. That's an increase in about 0.567% of C every second, so look out!

But okay, as a single stack of pennies (at 1.55 mm thick each), the answer I get is that the stack would be 2.2198356×1037 km high, or 2.346×1024 lightyears, so your math was right. That's about 85,620,437,956,204 times the diameter of the visible universe.

For comparison purposes, if you had a ball of pennies the size of the Earth (2.2236×1027 pennies) and stacked them all up, the stack would be about 364,304,734 lightyears high, or about 0.0133 times the diameter of the visible universe. (Each cubic meter of pennies makes a stack about 3,181.83 meters high.)

- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
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filthy
SFN Die Hard

USA
14408 Posts

Posted - 01/10/2008 :  14:00:53   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send filthy a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Hmm. Sounds a little like the fruit cake my ex sent me a few years ago. Believe me, no light could escape that cannon ball!

I sent it on to a cousin I loathe.




"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)

"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres


"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude

Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,

and Crypto-Communist!

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bngbuck
SFN Addict

USA
2437 Posts

Posted - 01/10/2008 :  14:48:33   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send bngbuck a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Because I'm definitely not an astrophysicist, and not exactly a penny-pincher (ask my wife), I don't have the slightest idea what you guys are talking about with regard to the Pennies from the Heavens schtick!

What the hell do pennies have to do with black holes? My daughter is certainly a dollar absorbing black hole, but I don't think that's what you mean!
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Dave W.
Info Junkie

USA
26020 Posts

Posted - 01/10/2008 :  15:02:43   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit Dave W.'s Homepage Send Dave W. a Private Message  Reply with Quote
See this thread. One quadrillion pennies ($10 trillion) stacked up would reach from Earth to Saturn. So now, if we discuss really big things, I might find it amusing to convert them into penny-stack equivalents (PSEs) for comparison purposes. (Unless they're really big errors, in which case we must use Dembskis.

- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too.
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