Number of black holes in universe found in new study - and final figure is terrifying

dailystar.co.uk:

black holes out there in space is mildly terrifying. But what if we told you that there far more than that?In fact, according to a new study from the International School for Advanced Studies in Italy, there are, in fact, 40,000,000,000,000,000,000 black holes out there.That's 40 billion billion - and they are thought to make up just one per cent of the observable universe.

The calculation was made by theoretical astrophysicist Alex Sicilia.Using a new formula, coupled with an extremely powerful computer, he worked the figure out using our observable universe, which is around 93 billion light years across.He said: “This research is really multidisciplinary, covering aspects of, and requiring expertise in stellar astrophysics, galaxy formation and evolution, gravitational wave and multi-messenger astrophysics; as such it needs collaborative efforts from various members of the SISSA Astrophysics and Cosmology group, and a strong networking with external collaborators. “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.”“This is one of the first, and one of the most robust, from first principles computation of the stellar black hole mass function across cosmic history.” While it's not clear exactly what this discovery will mean for planet Earth, two black holes were on course to collide just last month, which will cause one colossal cosmic black hole.To stay up to date with all the latest news, make sure you sign up to one of our newsletters here.Black holes have a gravitational pull so strong that nothing can escape - not even light.The supermassive black holes, which have not yet.