NEW HAVEN, Conn., Sept. 16 (UPI) -- A U.S. study suggests there is an upper limit to how big the universe's most massive black holes can become.
Such massive objects have been found at the centers of the largest galaxies and have been shown to have masses upwards of 1 billion times that of our sun.
Researchers led by Yale University Associate Professor Priyamvada Natarajan and Ezequiel Treister, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Hawaii, have shown even the largest of the gravitational objects appear to curb their own growth once they accumulate about 10 billion times the mass of the sun.
The physicists said their study -- to appear in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society -- represents the first time an upper mass limit has been derived for black holes.
