Very impressive news from Nasa! Scientists have discovered the heaviest small black hole in the universe, one with a mass 24-33 times the mass of the Sun. What makes this news impressive is that theoretically black holes with such a mass should not exist. Small black holes are born when stars die and their size is usually 10 times the mass of the Sun. The image on left side is artist’s portrayal of the IC 10 X-1 system. The black hole is on upper left corner.

These type of black holes are known as “stellar-mass” black holes because they have masses typical of stars. Now, if this news sounds big, it is nothing compared to so called “supermassive” black holes that may exist in the centers of large galaxies. They may contain millions or even billions of times the mass of our Sun.

This is one of the things that makes me thinking how little we know about the universe and how easily it all goes beyond our understanding. The size of the universe is just super huge and there are so huge amount of targets to research. All this makes astronomy faschinating and interesting. It is a fantastic world, right?

Read the original news in Nasa’s website.

Image credits: Aurore Simonnet/Sonoma State University/NASA.