Black holes have played a major role in science communication since their conceptualization and eventual discovery. These dark, massive bodies have garnered much attention in recent years due to them being exotic entities in space that seemingly defy the laws of reality.
Yet despite these, we now know so much more about black holes than ever before. We’ve now been able to identify black holes in galaxies beyond our own; we’ve even managed to work out what role black holes play in the outright creation of elements in the periodic table.
Recent findings published in The Astrophysical Journal, however, show that we may be underestimating just how many black holes there truly are in the universe. The study, spearheaded by scientists from Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati (SISSA), revealed that there may be some 40 quintillion black holes out there—and yes, that’s 40 followed by eighteen (18) zeros.
The team arrived at this astounding number through “an original approach” that combined the earlier-established “stellar and binary evolution code” of co-author and SISSA researcher Dr. Mario Spera with empirical data gathered about galaxies, which include the rate of stellar formation and other physical properties, according to a SISSA press release.
Said first author Alex Sicilia in a report by ScienceAlert: “This is one of the first, and one of the most robust, ab initio computation[s] of the stellar black hole mass function across cosmic history,” describing the series of calculations that they used to arrive at the immense 40 quintillion number of black holes that may be out there across the observable universe.
Sicilia added: “The innovative character of this work is in the coupling of a detailed model of stellar and binary evolution with advanced recipes for star formation and metal enrichment in individual galaxies.”
The work by Sicilia and team gives scientists valuable insights into other mysteries that surround the existence of black holes. These include questions about their presence in both the current and early universe, as well as questions concerning how these massive entities grow to such colossal sizes in a short period of time.
References
- Sicilia, A., Lapi, A., Boco, L., Spera, M., Di Carlo, U. N., Mapelli, M., Shankar, F., Alexander, D. M., Bressan, A., & Danese, L. (2022). The black hole mass function across cosmic times. I. Stellar black holes and light seed distribution. The Astrophysical Journal, 924(2), 56. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ac34fb
- Starr, M. (2022, January 19). A new study calculates the number of black holes in the universe. It’s a lot. ScienceAlert. https://www.sciencealert.com/new-study-calculates-the-number-of-black-holes-in-the-universe-it-s-a-lot
- There are 40 billion billions of Black Holes in the Universe. (2022, January 14). Scuola Internazionale Superiore Di Studi Avanzati. https://www.sissa.it/news/there-are-40-billion-billions-black-holes-universe
