US: NASA SCIENTISTS have identified the smallest black hole ever found - less than four times the mass of our Sun and about the size of a large city.
But the mini-black hole, dubbed J1650, could still stretch a person into a "strand of spaghetti" with the pull of its gravity, the researchers told a meeting in Los Angeles.
"This black hole is really pushing the limits. For many years astronomers have wanted to know the smallest possible size of a black hole, and this little guy is a big step toward answering that question," Nikolai Shaposhnikov of Nasa's space flight centre in Greenbelt, Maryland, said in a statement.
It would likely be stronger than bigger black holes found at the centres of galaxies. Like other black holes, it was formed by a star that ran out of fuel and shut down, collapsing due to its own gravity. -(Reuters)