Unbelievable: New research reveals how many black holes there are in the universe
"This is one of the first and most powerful calculations of the function of the star's black hole mass throughout cosmic history," said the study leader.
Also, observations in the distant universe revealed super-massive black holes very early in the day after the Big Bang
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20/01/2022
Thursday, 20 January 2022, 09:15 Updated: 09:30
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Black hole imaging (Photo: Reuters)
A new study has been able to find the answer to the amount of black holes that exist in the galaxy. According to the study, published in The Astrophysical Journal, the number of black holes is 40 quintillion (!), Or in other words - there are 40,000,000,000,000,000,000 black holes, which make up about 1 percent of the entire observed universe.
"The innovative nature of the study included a detailed model of stellar and binary evolution along with advanced calculations for star formation and enrichment of metals in individual galaxies," explains astrophysicist Alex Sicily from the International School of Advanced Studies (SISSA) in Italy, whose team conducted the study. "This is one of the first and most powerful calculations of the function of the stellar black hole throughout cosmic history."
These black holes are actually celestial bodies with such a strong gravitational field that radiation and objects close to them cannot escape from them and they are immediately swallowed up inside the center of the black hole.
The great physicist Albert Einstein stated in his general theory of relativity that a gravitational field as strong as the black hole could cause time to slow down.
This led to the formation of theories about time travel through the black holes.
Either way, black holes raise a lot of question marks, and if we can figure out how many black holes there are, we might be able to try and answer some of the questions.
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True documentation of a black hole (Photo: GettyImages)
One approach to calculating the amount of black holes is through a historical examination of massive stars in the universe. Accordingly, we can calculate the number of black holes that should be in any given volume of space. Thus the growth and evolution of super-massive black holes millions or billions of times the mass of the sun, which make up the cores of galaxies, can be predicted.
Sicily and his colleagues took a computational approach. They included in their calculation only black holes formed through the evolution of single or binary stars. They took into account the role of merging black holes, the number of which can be estimated based on gravitational wave data, and which produce black holes with a slightly higher mass.
This allowed them to calculate the birth rate of black holes that have a stellar mass between five and 160 times the mass of the sun over the life of the universe. This birth rate indicates that there should be about 40 quintillion black holes in stellar mass scattered throughout the currently observed universe, with the most massive black holes in stellar mass being formed by merging binary black holes in star clusters.
The team compared their results against gravitational wave data, and found that their assessment of the rate of black hole blending was in good agreement with the observational data.
By calculating the birth rate over time, the researchers were also able to estimate the number of black holes with a stellar mass in the early universe.
This is very interesting, as observations of the distant universe revealed super-massive black holes very early in the time after the Big Bang.
"Our work provides a solid theory for creating light seeds for (super) massive black holes, and can serve as a starting point for exploring the origin of 'heavy seeds', which we will be researching in the near future."
So says astrophysicist Lumen Boko from SISSA.
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Black holes
galaxy