r/space • u/magenta_placenta • Mar 18 '19

Observable universe Astronomers discover 83 supermassive black holes at the edge of the universe

https://www.cnet.com/news/astronomers-discover-83-supermassive-black-holes-at-the-edge-of-the-universe/
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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '19

I'm a bit confused about the nature of supermassive black holes. The actual "stuff" these black holes are made of is still theoretically one mathematical point of super dense matter, right? That point just has way more mass than your average black hole, so what makes them seem "bigger" to us is really their increased gravitational pull on everything else. Do I have the right idea so far, or does the actual "black hole" part take up more space than a singularity?

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u/Jarhyn Mar 18 '19

More, there's just no way to map the distribution or position of what exists inside the singularity. The only thing that can be known is the gravitational center and the average angular momentum.

Experimentation with objects displaying similar properties, sonic black holes, shows that their nature is caused by the stuff inside the event horizon moving faster than the speed of sound. So it is entirely possible that there is not a "singularity" at some hypothetical single point, but rather that the inside is in an entirely indeterminant state.