...(T)here's a shocking report recently published by astrophysicists at the University of Arizona in Tucson: The Milky Way's baby black holes are missing.

It might sound like a bizarre singularity kindergarten kidnapping case (I'm looking at you Andromeda), but Feryal Özel's Arizona team are in doubt as to whether the baby black holes existed in the first place.


WATCH VIDEO: Did you know there's a black hole in the center of our galaxy? A stellar-mass black hole is theorized to be created after a supernova. Supernovae are triggered when stars over eight-times the mass of our sun reach the end of their lives after catastrophically running out of fuel feeding stellar core fusion.

Immediately after supernova, if the remnant core has a mass of less than three suns, one would expect a blob of degenerate neutron matter to be spinning in the explosion's wake. This is a neutron star.

However, if the supernova remnant exceeds three solar masses, conventional physics suggests a black hole should be left behind.

But there's a problem. No stellar-mass black holes weighing between 2-5 solar masses have ever been observed, putting a serious question mark over the lower-mass black hole theory.

What's going on? Are low-mass black holes vanishing? Or is there some black hole formation process we're not familiar with?


Özel's team studied 16 binary systems in our galaxy known to contain a black hole and a stellar partner. None of them had a black hole of 2-5 solar masses living there, even after observational uncertainties were considered. Their findings will be published in the Astrophysical Journal.

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All right you clowns--Casseiopea? Betelgeuse? Horsehead? Where'd you stash the black holes, huh? You relaize you are putting the entire balance of forces in our galaxy at risk here? Quit dicking around (or asimoving around, or heinleining around, whatever...).