How to Use solar mass in a Sentence

solar mass

noun
Definition of solar massnext
  • The two black holes that merged were massive: one hole was 31 times the mass of the sun, and the other was 25 solar masses.
    — Author: Sarah Kaplan, Ben Guarino, Alaska Dispatch News, 28 Sep. 2017
  • Our own sun is used as a unit of measurement in the Cosmos called a solar mass.
    — Mark Johnson, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 12 July 2018
  • The black hole at the center of our own galaxy is just 4 million solar masses.
    — John Wenz, Popular Mechanics, 10 Apr. 2019
  • Seven billion years later, the core of the sun will shrink to its remnant, a white dwarf, carrying about half of the solar mass with the rest lost.
    — Avi Loeb, Scientific American, 30 Oct. 2020
  • The first black holes could suck in about one solar mass of material from the horizon around themselves.
    — Quanta Magazine, 23 Sep. 2020
  • Neutron stars are very dense, having about a solar mass in a sphere just a few kilometers across.
    — Chris Lee, Ars Technica, 9 Aug. 2018
  • Just one supernova can eject more than a solar mass of oxygen.
    — Ken Croswell, Scientific American, 1 July 2020
  • The rate of star formation in a galaxy like this can reach a few thousand times the mass of our sun each year -- compared to our own galaxy, which forms three solar masses in a year.
    — Ashley Strickland, CNN, 12 Dec. 2019
  • At about three solar masses, no one is really sure what happens.
    — Chris Lee, Ars Technica, 9 Aug. 2018
  • The object that forms instead crushes one or two solar masses down to an object with a diameter of about 20km.
    — John Timmer, Ars Technica, 16 Oct. 2017
  • The supermassive black hole at the center of that galaxy weighs 6 billion solar masses.
    — John Wenz, Popular Mechanics, 10 Apr. 2019
  • Their answer: The galaxy weighs around 1.5 trillion solar masses.
    — Brian Resnick, Vox, 27 June 2019
  • Formed on the heavy side to begin with through the merger of stars, these grow to tens of thousands of solar masses before merging to create supermassive black holes.
    — John Timmer, Ars Technica, 6 Sep. 2017
  • The research team found the galaxy formed more than 1,000 solar masses a year in stars at its peak of activity, which is an extremely high rate of star formation.
    — Doyle Rice, USA TODAY, 6 Feb. 2020
  • Its five-year orbit takes it in close proximity to its companion, a monster that could be more than 100 solar masses.
    — John Timmer, Ars Technica, 6 Aug. 2018
  • The smaller object, by contrast, was below three solar masses.
    — The Economist, 22 Aug. 2019
  • In this approach, collapsing clouds in the early universe gave birth to overgrown baby black holes that weighed thousands or tens of thousands of solar masses.
    — Quanta Magazine, 6 Dec. 2017
  • This is not because a black hole cannot be smaller than that in principle, but rather, five solar masses is the smallest a black hole which formed from a collapsing star would be expected to be.
    — The Economist, 20 Aug. 2019
  • These could have as little as 1 percent of a solar mass, whereas the vast majority of black holes detected by LIGO so far weigh more than 10 solar masses.
    — Steve Nadis, Wired, 23 May 2021
  • According to the Goethe researchers, the difference is simple: 2.16 solar masses.
    — John Wenz, Popular Mechanics, 19 Jan. 2018
  • And the end result is a neutron star just under two solar masses, with most of that material being an exotic form of matter of unbound quarks and gluons.
    — John Timmer, Ars Technica, 24 Oct. 2018
  • Most galaxies are thought to harbour a central supermassive black hole that weighs millions, or even billions, of solar masses.
    — Davide Castelvecchi, Scientific American, 23 Apr. 2018
  • In fact, based on the earlier observation of merging neutron stars, some theorists argue a neutron star cannot weigh more than about 2.2 solar masses.
    — Adrian Cho, Science | AAAS, 16 Aug. 2019
  • Taking all that into account, the new analysis finds the two neutron stars involved in the merger, each weighing perhaps 1.4 solar masses, were rather small for that weight: about 12 kilometers in radius.
    — Joshua Sokol, Scientific American, 5 June 2018
  • Astronomers have long found evidence for small, star-sized black holes—up to about 10 times the sun’s mass—and supermassive ones, containing millions or billions of solar masses, in galactic cores.
    — Daniel Clery, Science | AAAS, 4 Sep. 2017
  • Both of them are embedded in the Homunculus Nebula, the product of earlier eruptions that holds about 15 solar masses of material in its two main lobes, which roughly align with the stars' orbit.
    — John Timmer, Ars Technica, 6 Aug. 2018
  • The missing material—three solar masses' worth of black hole—was converted to energy in the form of gravitational waves.
    — John Timmer, Ars Technica, 27 Sep. 2017
  • The end results of this catastrophe are the densest astrophysical objects known: a neutron star that squeezes several solar masses into a city-sized orb, or something even more extreme, a black hole.
    — Jonathan O'Callaghan, Scientific American, 25 Nov. 2019
  • The trouble is that LIGO’s data suggest this neutron star pair was substantially overweight—collectively, some 3.4 times the mass of the sun, which is half a solar mass heavier than the most massive neutron star binaries ever seen.
    — Nola Taylor Redd, Scientific American, 13 Jan. 2020
  • Before LIGO’s first detection of gravitational waves, astronomers thought black holes couldn’t get bigger than about 10 solar masses.
    — Marina Koren, The Atlantic, 27 Sep. 2017

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'solar mass.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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