A sky survey image of the massive galaxy NGC 1600, and a Hubble Space Telescope closeup of the bright center of the galaxy where the 17-billion-solar-mass black hole — or binary black hole — resides. Credit: ESA/Hubble image courtesy of STScI.
A near-record 17-billion-sun supermassive black hole discovered in a sparse area of the local universe indicates these monster objects may be more common than once thought. Until now, the biggest supermassive black holes – those with masses ~10 billion times that of our sun – have been found at the cores of very large galaxies in regions loaded with other large galaxies. The current record holder, discovered in the Coma Cluster tips the scale at 21 billion solar masses and is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records.
The newly discovered black ho...
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