(Image source: Nature)

BY JIM FLINK

ANCHOR MEGAN MURPHY

Want a story line for the next sci-fi horror flick? How about a black hole billions of times the size of the sun -- sucking stuff in. Oh wait. Scientists say -- it’s true!

Here’s The Guardian.

“Astronomers have located the two biggest black holes ever found, each one billions of times more massive than our sun. The galaxy NGC 3842, around 320m light years from Earth in the constellation of Leo, has a black hole at its centre with a mass of around 9.7bn suns.”

And there’s an even bigger black hole-- around 336 million light years from Earth. Ok, so we’re not at risk -- yet.  Or -- anytime soon.

That doesn’t keep a science writer at The New York Times from spinning a wicked tale, saying they...

“...might be the gravitational cornerstones of galaxies and clues to the fates of violent quasars, the almost supernaturally powerful explosions in the hearts of young galaxies that dominated the early years of the  universe.”

Talk about sucking you in.... Question is -- how’d the black holes become so massive?

MSNBC talks with a Cal Berkeley scientist who says -- ‘don’t know.’

"We know that bigger galaxies are made by mergers of smaller galaxies, and during this process, the black holes at the centers of the smaller galaxies can merge to form bigger black holes … But black holes can also grow by being fed by gas in their vicinity. It's a bit like asking, 'Are taller children produced by taller parents or by eating a lot of spinach?' For black holes, we are not sure."

But Nature says, there’s plenty scientists have already learned from the life-sucking space phenomena. Try this on for size.

“Supermassive black holes formed early in the history of the Universe, by gorging on gas and stars in the cores of developing galaxies. They are thought to reside in most if not all of the massive galaxies astronomers can observe today, but they cannot be seen directly, as light cannot escape the gravitational field of a black hole.”

Now, if you dig this kind of cosmic mind-blowing stuff -- we’ve linked the entire research paper in our transcript section.