An Italian astronomer explains that a supermassive black hole have masses millions or billions times greater than that of our host star, and have grown to vast magnitude by engulfing matter and merging with other black holes.
In a recent TED-Ed video, called “Could the Earth be swallowed by a black hole?” Fabio Pacucci, a Yale Postdoctoral Associate, explicate that a supermassive black hole is more like a “cosmic vacuum cleaner with infinite capacity”, eating everything in its way due to the strong gravitational field.
Pacucci says:
“Nothing, not even light, can move fast enough to escape a black hole’s gravitational pull once it passes a certain boundary, known as the event horizon. The black hole is millions or billions times greater than that of our Sun and has an event horizon that could span billion of kilometres”
You can watch the video below: