More Monster Black Holes Could Hide in Space ‘Deserts’

A newly discovered black hole has been found in galaxy NGC 1600, in the opposite part of the sky from the Coma Cluster—in what is a relative desert.

Black holes bend light like a lens, distorting the stars behind them, as portrayed in the above simulation. The black center represents the event horizon of the black hole, from which nothing, not even light, can escape. NASA, ESA, D. Coe, J. Anderson, and R. van der Marel/STScI

Until now, the biggest supermassive black holes—those with masses at or near 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.

But now, a newly discovered black hole has been found in galaxy NGC 1600, in the opposite part of the sky from the Coma Cluster—in what is a relative desert. While finding a gigantic black hole in a massive galaxy in a crowded area of the universe is to be expected—sort of like running across a skyscraper in Manhattan—it has seemed less likely they could be found in the universe’s small towns.

“Rich groups of galaxies like the Coma Cluster are very, very rare, but there are quite a few galaxy groups the size of NGC 1600 and its satellites,” says Chung-Pei professor of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley. “So the question now is, ‘Is this the tip of an iceberg?’ Maybe there are a lot more monster black holes out there that don’t live in a skyscraper in Manhattan, but in a tall silo somewhere in the Midwestern plains.”

Maybe there are a lot more monster black holes out there that don't live in a skyscraper in Manhattan, but in a tall silo somewhere in the Midwestern plains.