Femmetees: North Quincy High School Alumni logo shirt

Friday, June 2, 2023

North Quincy High School Alumni logo shirt

However big that black hole is, it is dwarfed by the size of the North Quincy High School Alumni logo shirt itself. That four million solar masses is a lot compared to our solar system, but it is absolutely puny compared to the total mass of the Milky Way, which is many tens of billions of solar masses. Galaxies are held together by self-gravity. They may or may not have a supermassive black hole (not all do). When that supermassive black hole is present, its gravity adds a modest contribution to the total self-gravity of the galaxy. But in all cases, even in the case of the largest black holes, the mass of the galaxy dominates over the mass of the black hole. Stars in a galaxy follow somewhat chaotic orbits, determined by the combined gravitational field of all other stars, clouds of gas, clouds of dust, and well, any black holes if present, supermassive or otherwise. But apart from stars that are relatively near the black hole in question, stuff in general does not orbit the black hole.

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