A black hole sucks material from a companion star (Illustration: NASA/Honeywell Max-Q Digital Group/Dana Berry)
A black hole as heavy as almost 16 Suns has set a new weight record for black holes that form from collapsing stars. Its discovery suggests that there may be even heavier ones lurking out there, spawned in the death throes of the universe’s most massive stars.
When a very massive star ends its life, its outer layers explode outwards, forming a supernova, while its core collapses to form a black hole. There are limits to the size of the so-called stellar-mass black holes born…
