As astronomers continue to study black holes and their interaction with our universe, a new research paper indicates they may get the chance to do a lot of that in future.
A study by scientists at the University of California, Irvine, suggests there may be many more black holes in our universe than we originally thought; and probably proportionately as many in our own galaxy.
Published by researchers Oliver D Elbert, James S Bullock and Manoj Kaplinghat, the study uses new data on black hole mergers to construct a formula that links the size of a galaxy to the number of black holes it hides. “Based on what we know about star formation in galaxies of different types, we can infer when and how many black holes formed in each galaxy. Big galaxies are home to older stars, and they host older black holes too,” Dr. Elbert said in a press release.
Black holes are usually created as a result of a star collapsing, so it’s only logical that larger galaxies with more high-mass stars would statistically have more black holes than smaller ones. When one star dies and explodes, the nebula it leaves often leads to new stars being formed. However, only stars of a certain minimum size will form a black hole when they die, and our Sun isn’t one of them.
The new model theorised indicates the Milky Way may hold “as many as 100 million black holes,” says Dr Bullock. There are an estimated 100 billion stars in the Milky Way alone, so about one in a thousand of those are black holes.