• Question: How many black holes have appeared in the universe

    Asked by anon-245785 to Samantha on 10 Mar 2020.
    • Photo: Samantha Faircloth

      Samantha Faircloth answered on 10 Mar 2020:

      Hi Nosike, That is a good question! Whilst scientists haven’t seen them all, they have estimated that within our own galaxy, the Milky Way, there could be as many as a billion black holes! That gives you some idea of just how big our galaxy is if there are that many black holes! : -)

Comments

  • Photo: David

    David commented on :

    What is really cool is that we can now make some really good guesses about this. We know that black holes mostly come from the cores of very massive stars when they die, and we have measured hoe these massive stars have formed and died over the last 13 billion years. That’s how we know that the black hole formation rate has been declining over the last 11 billion years, and currently the Universe is producing about 30 times less black holes per year than 11 billion years ago