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LiveScience
LiveScience
Harry Baker

Milky Way's rarest black hole may lurk behind 7 stars that 'shouldn't be there'

An artist's interpretation of a black hole surrounded by stars.

Astronomers may have found a rare "missing link" black hole in the Milky Way after spotting a group of improbably fast-moving stars at the heart of a nearby stellar cluster. If confirmed, the cosmic juggernaut, known as an intermediate-mass black hole (IMBH), would be the second-largest black hole ever found in our galaxy. 

IMBHs are an extremely rare subset of black holes that are larger than stellar-mass black holes but smaller than supermassive black holes. This means they can be anywhere between 100 and 100,000 times the mass of the sun, according to NASA.

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