How Big Are Black Holes?
In space, the most simple questions are often the most difficult to answer. The size of black holes is one of these tricky questions. More than 100 years ago, Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity shocked the world with the concept of black holes. Years after his death, astronomers found that his prediction was true. They discovered black holes with a gravitational pull so strong that nothing could escape it, not even light.
Three years ago, astronomers using the Event Horizon Telescope captured the first image of a black hole. The black hole itself is not visible. Instead, it appears as a dark void surrounded by an orbiting disk of glowing matter. It was 55 million light-years away, NASA cataloged it as a supermassive black hole. Its event horizon could be as big as our entire solar system.
Related: Hubble Finds A Black Hole That Creates Stars Instead Of Devouring Them
There are two approaches to answer the black-hole-size question. The more philosophical approach says that the forces of a black hole are so massive that they bend, warp, and distort time and space, so measuring them is impossible. But NASA takes a more practical approach. They measure a black hole's rotation, spin, and mass to measure its size. NASA catalogs black holes from small or primordial to stellar and supermassive. They also differentiate those black holes that rotate from those that don't. And those entangled in a dance with another star in what they call a binary system.
It is critical to understand the parts of a black hole to get to the bottom of the question of size. In the very center of a black hole, we find the Singularity. It is where all the matter collapses and collapses into a region of infinite density. The Event Horizon is
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