Astronomers have discovered a near-record supermassive black hole – weighing in at 17 billion suns – in an area of the universe that was previously considered relatively empty.

The study, published today in Nature, shows that supermassive black holes – those with masses of 10 billion suns or more – are not restricted to the cores of very large galaxies in regions full with other large galaxies.

The current record holder – weighing 21 billion suns – was discovered in a spectacular and rare galaxy cluster called the Coma Cluster.

Today’s discovery was in an average-size galaxy group in a galaxy called NGC 1600 on the opposite side of the night’s sky to the Coma Cluster.

Because galaxies like NGC 1600 are far more common researchers believe that supermassive black holes may be lurking everywhere in the universe.

Top Reddit comment:

Even with clarification, those numbers given are incomprehensible and awesome... The event horizon is 340 AU (eight times the distance of Pluto's orbit). Its sphere of influence is 3000ly across. The entirety of the Milky Way is ONLY three times more massive. Mother of god.

Source:

https://reddit.com/r/science/comments/4dmnkx/nearrecord_supermassive_black_hole_has_been/