‘Stellar’ black holes form when massive stars collapse under their own gravity at the end of their lives.
We know that a star must have an initial mass of between 15–20 solar masses in order to collapse and form a stellar black hole.
We also have a pretty good idea of the distribution of stellar masses in the Milky Way.
These two facts tell us that about one in 1,000 stars has the potential to become a black hole.
An estimate of the number of stars in the Milky Way, 100 billion stars, then implies there could be up to 100 million stellar black holes in the Milky Way.
This article is an answer to the question (asked by [Aled Weaver, Wigan]) 'How many black holes are there in the Milky Way?'
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