{"id":242156,"date":"2026-08-04T01:22:45","date_gmt":"2026-08-04T06:22:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/08\/simulations-hint-at-a-hidden-population-of-companionless-black-holes"},"modified":"2026-08-04T01:22:45","modified_gmt":"2026-08-04T06:22:45","slug":"simulations-hint-at-a-hidden-population-of-companionless-black-holes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/08\/simulations-hint-at-a-hidden-population-of-companionless-black-holes","title":{"rendered":"Simulations hint at a hidden population of companionless black holes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/simulations-hint-at-a-hidden-population-of-companionless-black-holes2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>So far, almost all stellar-mass black holes detected by astronomers have been found in binary systems. However, astronomers have long suspected that these binary black holes are the exception and that, within the Milky Way, most exist on their own.<\/p>\n<p>Through new simulations, researchers led by Wagg at the Flatiron Institute in New York have calculated that more than 90% of stellar-mass black holes in our galaxy could be isolated in this way, hinting at the possibility of a vast reservoir of as-yet unobserved bodies. Their results have been published on the <a href=\"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/2607.22814\" target=\"_blank\"><i>arXiv<\/i><\/a> preprint server.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So far, almost all stellar-mass black holes detected by astronomers have been found in binary systems. However, astronomers have long suspected that these binary black holes are the exception and that, within the Milky Way, most exist on their own. Through new simulations, researchers led by Wagg at the Flatiron Institute in New York have [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-242156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cosmology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242156\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}