Can black holes “eat” matter indefinitely or is there a limit? Do they ever have trouble absorbing large masses or is it always the same?
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As others have said, there is no known limit to the *amount* of matter a black hole can consume.
However, there is a limit in how *fast* it can consume matter.
The gravitational attraction from black holes is really strong, and that strength can cause matter falling in to rub and squish and compress, heating it up. That hot matter will start to glow brighter and brighter the hotter it is.
Eventually, the stuff falling in will be *so insanely bright* that the outgoing radiation is *stronger than the black hole’s gravity*.
All nearby matter will get blasted away by the radiation temporarily, until it cools down again, and starts falling back in.
This actually leads to a fun physics problem we have yet to figure out. We’ve discovered supermassive black holes that are bigger than they should be allowed to be. If we assume they started as regular black holes, because of that “eating limit”, they haven’t had time to grow to their sizes just from consuming other matter. Figuring out where these come from is still an active field of physics research!
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