Astronomers have found a monster black hole, some 17 billion times more massive than the sun, in a modestly sized galaxy, raising suspicions supermassive black holes may be more common than originally thought.

Key points: Monster black hole NGC 1600 10 times more massive than expected

Monster black hole NGC 1600 10 times more massive than expected Typically a supermassive black hole accounts for 0.2 per cent of its host galaxy's mass

Typically a supermassive black hole accounts for 0.2 per cent of its host galaxy's mass NGC 1600 accounts for 2.1 per cent of its galaxy's mass

NGC 1600 accounts for 2.1 per cent of its galaxy's mass Finding suggests supermassive black holes are more common than thought

Previously, all known supermassive black holes were found in very large galaxies that are clustered in large groups of galaxies.

Black holes are regions so packed with matter that not even photons of light can escape the gravitational warping of space.

The largest black hole found so far is about 21 billion times more massive than the sun. In comparison, the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way galaxy, named Sagittarius A, is about 4 million times the mass of the sun.

The newly discovered black hole is in a somewhat isolated and average-sized galaxy known as NGC 1600. It was studied as part of an ongoing survey of the 100 most massive galaxies within about 300 million light-years from Earth.

"Probably all of these galaxies harbour black holes in their centres. The question we would like to answer is how massive the black holes are, and whether there are more hefty ones like the one we found in NGC 1600," study co-author Professor Chung-Pei Ma of the University of California Berkeley, said.

"We don't know right now if NGC 1600 is the tip of an iceberg, or a rare find, perhaps as a result of an unusually voracious phase during its youth."

Black hole is an oddity

However it came to exist, NGC 1600's black hole is an oddity, roughly 10 times more massive than what astronomers would expect a galaxy of its size to host.

"The relationship between black holes and their host galaxies is more intricate and depends on a black hole's feeding history in addition to location. Nurture and nature therefore both matter for the ultimate size of these black holes," Professor Ma said.

Typically, supermassive black holes account for about 0.2 per cent of its host galaxy's mass. NGC 1600's black hole is 2.1 per cent of the galaxy's mass.

One idea is that NGV 1600 is a "fossil" system, said study co-author astronomer Dr Jens Thomas with Germany's Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics.

In contrast to other averaged-sized galaxy groups, which typically contain a family of a few, similarly massive galaxies, the NGC 1600 group may have formed in a slightly different way, merging together into a single massive galaxy very quickly, Dr Thomas said.

"This would mean that the environment of NGC 1600 is 'empty' because the evolution was faster and the surroundings have already been consumed."

Another explanation for NGC 1600's black hole is that it actually is a pair.

"Our current data cannot tell if it's a singlet or a twin," Professor Ma said.

She hopes planned low-frequency gravitational wave surveys may be able to solve the mystery.

The research is published in this week's Nature.

This story was originally published on DiscoveryNews.com