By Science Codex
A group headed by Remco van den Bosch from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy has discovered a black hole that shakes the foundations of current models of galaxy evolution. This monster has 17 billion solar masses and is thus significantly heavier than the models predict. And even more significantly: the object could be the most massive black hole known to date.
Astronomers believe there is a super-massive black hole at the heart of every galaxy. Its mass ranges from several hundred thousand solar masses to a few billion. The black hole that has been best investigated has around four million solar masses and sits at the centre of our home galaxy, the Milky Way.