A recent study has found that 40 quintillion stellar-mass black holes are lurking in the universe.

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Small black holes are thought to account for 1% of the universe's mass, according to current estimates.

Scientists have approximated the number of "small black holes" in the cosmos. It's a lot, as you could expect.

Because discovering a black hole isn't exactly an easy task, this quantity can seem impossible to compute The light-eating cosmic goliaths can only be detected under the most extraordinary circumstances because they are as black as the space they lurk in — like when they are bending the light around them, snacking on the unfortunate gases and stars that stray too close, or spiraling toward enormous collisions that unleash gravitational waves.

Despite this, scientists have devised various creative approaches to estimate the quantity. A team of astrophysicists has come up with a new estimate for the number of stellar-mass black holes—those with masses five to ten times that of the sun—in the universe.

There are 40 quintillion stellar-mass black holes in the observable universe, which amounts to about one percent of all normal matter. This is astounding.

How, therefore, did the researchers arrive at that figure? First author Alex Sicilia, an astrophysicist at the International School of Advanced Studies (SISSA) in Trieste, Italy, estimated how often stars in our universe — either on their own or in pairs into binary systems — would transform into black holes by following the evolution of the stars in the universe.

The stellar black hole mass function has never been computed ab initio before, and Sicilia claims that this is the most reliable ab initio (from the ground up) calculation to date.

First, you'll need a massive star, one that's at least as massive as the sun. Big stars are dying, and their cores are becoming ever hotter and hotter, fusing bigger and heavier elements like silicon and magnesium. This fusion process, however, sets the star on a course to self-destruction once iron is formed. The star loses its power to push against the massive gravitational forces caused by its enormous mass because iron absorbs more energy than it puts off during the fusion process. In the process, it compresses everything around it into a point of infinite density and dimensions. This point is called a singularity. When a star collapses into a black hole, nothing, even light, can escape its gravitational pull.

According to the researchers, they had to model the current lifespan of stars in our universe and the stars that came before them to come up with their estimate. To accurately represent the varying sizes and frequencies of star formation in the cosmos, the researchers used data from numerous galaxies, such as their diameters, elements they contain, and the sizes of the gas clouds in which stars form.

Using data such as mass and a property called metallicity — the abundance of elements heavier than hydrogen or helium—the researchers modeled the lives and deaths of these stars to find out what percentage would eventually transform into black holes after they had determined the rate of formation for stars that could eventually become black holes. The researchers avoided counting any black holes twice by looking at binary systems of stars and by measuring the rate at which black holes can collide and merge. These mergers and the munching on neighboring gas by nearby black holes would impact the size distribution of the black holes found all around the universe, they discovered.

With these numbers in hand, the researchers developed a model that monitored the population and size distribution of stellar-mass black holes over time to arrive at their jaw-dropping number. The researchers then proved that their model was in good accord with the data by comparing the estimate with data gathered from gravitational waves, or ripples in space-time, created by black holes and binary star mergers.

Using the new estimate, astronomers hope to investigate some of the mysteries of the early universe, such as how black holes with masses millions or even billions of times greater than the stellar-mass holes studied in this study arose so quickly after the Big Bang — and how this happened so quickly.

The researchers believe that a greater knowledge of how small black holes evolved in the early universe could help them discover the origins of their supermassive cousins, as these black holes were produced by the merger of smaller, stellar-mass black holes.

To examine the origin of "heavy seeds," an astrophysicist at SISSA, Lumen Boco, says, "Our work gives a robust explanation for the generation of light seeds for supermassive black holes at high redshift [far back in time]."

Reference : https://www.livescience.com/researchers-calculate-how-many-black-holes

Image source : https://pixabay.com/id/illustrations/bumi-bulan-ruang-angkasa-1151659/

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