Quasar TON 618

This is a submission for Kevin’s No Theme Thursday

Image by Kevin from The Beginning at Last

Kevin’s artistic picture above reminds me of a Quasar, a supermassive black hole emitting enormous amounts of energy.

What is a Quasar ?

A Quasar is a supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy that is emitting enormous amounts of energy. The quasar is the supermassive black hole plus its accretion disk, the gas it is feeding on and the radiation it emits. The quasar is actively feeding on gas and stars and emitting enormous amounts of radiation in the process. The radiant energy of quasars is enormous; the most powerful quasars have luminosities thousands of times greater than that of a galaxy such as the Milky Way, and millions of times greater than the largest and most luminous stars in the known universe.

Supermassive black hole at the center of a quasar. Singularity in space devouring matter and light. From Shutterstock Asset id: 2484018599 by Nazarii Neshcherenskyi.

TON 618

TON 618 is a hyper luminous Quasar known to house one of the most massive black holes ever discovered, with an estimated mass of around 40 to 60 billion solar masses. Its luminosity is estimated to be 140 trillion times that of the Sun. The diameter of TON 618 is 780 billion kilometers or 82.6 light-years. Keep in mind that the distance to the moon is 1.3 light seconds and 82.6 light years is more than two billion times larger than that. Our sun is gigantic with a diameter 109 times larger than the diameter of earth. 1.3 million earths could fit inside the volume of our sun. However, in comparison to TON 618, our sun is a lot less than tiny. The diameter of TON 618 is 561 million times larger than that of the sun’s diameter and 177 octillion (an octillion is 27 zeros) suns could fit inside the volume of TON 618. In other words, we are comparing a dust particle to planet earth size wise. I am pretty sure you are not going to be able to imagine this.

Quasar in deep space. Elements of this image furnished by NASA. Asset id: 1758938918. by NASA images.

When TON 618 was discovered in 1957, quasars and supermassive black holes were not yet recognized and understood by astronomers. The word quasar inspired shock and awe in every nerd on the planet. The concept of quasars, or quasi-stellar radio sources, wasn’t fully recognized until 1963. When I was a kid in the 1970’s there was a lot of speculation as to what these gigantic ultra bright but far away objects could be. TON 618 is located 18.2 billion light years away. Considering that the reachable limit of the Universe is 16.5 billion light years even if you travel at the speed of light, you could never travel to TON 618 (barring the warp drive in Star Trek).

The Event Horizon

When we are talking about the diameter of a black hole we are not talking about a sphere with a solid surface. The black hole is a sphere, or an oval, wherein gravity is so strong that nothing can escape, not light, not anything. It’s truly black. As you approach the event horizon you become invisible, space deforms, and from the perspective of an outside observer, time appears to stop for someone reaching the event horizon of a black hole. Time will continue for someone falling in, well in some sense. You’ll be transported beyond our universe and time as we know it. We can guess but we can’t really know.

When this spaceship reaches the event horizon the time will stop from our perspective, and they will never enter the black hole. From their perspective they will enter right through the event horizon, and they will be transported infinitely far into a future beyond time. Stock AI-generated image ID: 2448481683 AI-generated image Contributor Shutterstock AI Generator.

Black Holes

Black holes are invisible. They are truly black. However, we can see them if they are consuming matter. The matter close to black holes will heat up and glow. The closer to the event horizon the redder it is. It is called an accretion disk as in the depiction above. There are an estimated 100 million black holes in our galaxy, the Milky Way. At the center of the Milky Way is a super massive black hole called Sagittarius A-star. It is 4 million times more massive than our sun. There are supermassive black holes located at the center of most large galaxies. The supermassive black holes are considered to play a crucial role in the formation of galaxies.

3D illustration of giant Black hole in deep space. High quality digital space art in 5K – realistic visualization. Stock Illustration ID: 2476711459 by Vadim Sadovski.

Black Hole Animation

Below is an animation created by NASA that depicts what an observer falling into a black hole would see. The video is about 4 minutes long.

TON 618  Animation

Below is an animation of TON 618, a quasar and the largest black hole known in the universe. This video is about 5 minutes.

To see my The Bizarre Reality of Black Holes Super Fact Click Here
To see the Super Facts click here

Note : Today March 14 is Albert Einstein’s birthday, the man who gave us the General Theory of Relativity, which mathematically describes black holes. It is also Pi Day (first 10 digits 3.1415926535), and there’s a rare moon eclipse tonight called a blood moon or a worm moon. Also, Dallas is under a fire warning. Be careful.

Important Note : I am going on a ski vacation tomorrow and I will take a one-week break from blogging as well as a break from reading other people’s blogs.

Author: thomasstigwikman

My name is Thomas Wikman. I am a software/robotics engineer with a background in physics. I am currently retired. I took early retirement. I am a dog lover, and especially a Leonberger lover, a home brewer, craft beer enthusiast, I’m learning French, and I am an avid reader. I live in Dallas, Texas, but I am originally from Sweden. I am married to Claudia, and we have three children. I have two blogs. The first feature the crazy adventures of our Leonberger Le Bronco von der Löwenhöhle as well as information on Leonbergers. The second blog, superfactful, feature information and facts I think are very interesting. With this blog I would like to create a list of facts that are accepted as true among the experts of the field and yet disputed amongst the public or highly surprising. These facts are special and in lieu of a better word I call them super-facts.

48 thoughts on “Quasar TON 618”

  4. I did not know there was such a thing as octillion. Again, I learned something new, which I love. A lot of new things, actually. Thank you as always, Thomas! And enjoy your vacation!

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    1. Yes after Trillion (12 zeros) comes quadrillion (15 zeros), then quintillion (18 zeros), then sextillion (21 zeros), then septillion (24 zeros), then octillion (27 zeros), then nontillion (30 zeros). Thank you so much Kevin for hosting the No Theme Thursday and being an inspiration.

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    1. Yes you are right, I wrote two. The last one was focused on Black Holes in general, and this one was focus specifically on the quasars. One thing I find fascinating is that we’ve known about Black Holes since at least the 1950’s but in the 1950’s and 1960’s even the 1970’s we did not put together that quasars were supermassive and active (feeding) black holes. We just did not know what they were. Thank you so much for your confidence Robbie, but I have too much to learn before I can write any novels.

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      1. Just watched them both. Mind-boggling! I think the enormous distances of space-time are the reason it seems there’s no life except on earth. There probably is/was, but we can’t perceive it, nor can it perceive us.

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        1. Yes I think you are on to something. The speed of light seems to be an absolute speed limit. The only way around it is bending speed-time itself (warp drive) in a way that is lot more extreme than a black hole can do. If you could go close to the speed of light the distances are so large that we are talking about thousands or millions or billions of years to reach places with the possibility of intelligent life, not to mention the enormous energies that would be needed. As Enrico Fermi said during a discussion about interstellar travel with his collegues “But where is everybody?” Maybe it is just too far. Or maybe there is no other intelligent life. As Arthur C. Clarke said “Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”

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    1. That is a good question that is really for David Lee Summers who sometimes visit this blog. I don’t know the details but I know that telescopes have come a long way. They are much more powerful now and new types of telescopes have been introduced since then, ultraviolet, x-ray, gamma ray, very powerful radio telescopes, space based telescopes such as Hubble and James Webb, not to mention gravity wave based ones like LIGO. Then a lot of discoveries have been made since then. For example, the cosmic background microwave radiation and that supermassive black holes exist in the center of galaxies. Back then it was just mystery. Millions of times brighter than the largest stars meant it couldn’t be a star, because it was not possible according to the laws of physics, so what was it?

      Anyway, thank you so much Sue. I am looking forward to the ski trip. I am all packed and we are ready to go early tomorrow morning.

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  12. You’re right that these sizes and distances are almost impossible to imagine, Thomas. It’s fascinating that we even know what we know! The videos were very cool. Thanks for adding those. And thanks for the wonderful science!

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  13. Java Bean: “Ayyy, things sure do get crazy out in space. And here I thought it took a long time for us to get to the park down in Rancho Santa Fe!”Lulu: “Enjoy your trip! And especially enjoy the snow! So lucky, we never have any snow to play in here …”

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    1. You are right Java Bean. So much out there in space is so extreme, so huge, so far, so hot, so powerful. I just came back from my trip and we certainly enjoyed the snow. When we left Dallas it was 90 degrees one day and 86 degrees the next and then in Breckenridge it was 2-3 feet of snow and 10 degrees. I know dogs love snow.

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  14. I remember my first real exposure to black holes was the Disney film of the same name from like 1980 or 1981. It was waaaaayyy darker than one would expect from Disney at the time … And also, of course, mostly lacking in scientific accuracy.

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