Based on the accuracy of their calculation, scientists hope to further understand the growth and evolution of supermassive black holes.
The researchers counted the number of black holes in space and named the number followed by 18 zeros.
According to astrophysicists, there are 40 quintillion (i.e., about 40 x 1018, i.e. 4 followed by 19 zeros!) black holes in the universe. That is, 40,000,000,000,000,000,000.
“The innovative character of this work is in the coupling of a detailed model of stellar and binary evolution with advanced recipes for star formation and metal enrichment in individual galaxies,” explains astrophysicist Alex Sicilia of the International School of Advanced Studies (SISSA) in Italy.
“This is one of the first, and one of the most robust, ab initio computation[s] of the stellar black hole mass function across cosmic history.”
They call this work the first of the most reliable calculations in the entire history of space and believe that in this way they can understand the processes of growth and evolution of supermassive black holes.
So far, the heaviest black holes are known to be the result of binary black holes merging in star clusters. Later they are transformed into the nuclei of galaxies.
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