Black holes are considered cosmic gluttons, from which not even light can escape. That is also why the images of black holes at the center of the galaxy M87 and our Milky Way, published a few years ago by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration,

Most of these astrophysical monsters are stars with various behavioral issues, such as explosive supernovae or ridiculously powerful (and tempestuous) magnetars. In a recent The Universe column, I wrote about particularly nasty cosmic nightmares called active galaxies.

An unexpected monster black hole was found hiding inside one of the Milky Way's tiniest neighbors, rewriting what scientists thought they knew about how small galaxies hold themselves together.

At the heart of the Milky Way, just 27,000 light-years from Earth, there is a supermassive black hole with a mass of more than 4 million suns. Nearly all galaxies contain a supermassive black hole, and many of them are much more massive.

The Big Bang theory has dominated our understanding of the universe’s origin for almost 100 years. It describes a moment when all of space, time, and energy were born from a single infinitely dense point.

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center runs down the best-known Black Holes in the Milky Way galaxy and the Large Magellanic Cloud. Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

A near-infrared view of the stars near the center of the Milky Way galaxy. Credit: ESO / S. Gillessen et al. Astronomers suspect the giant black hole at the heart of the Milky Way may have collided with another black hole in just the past 10 million years.