2:42 pm Popular ideas include a ‘terror’ of black holes and a ‘silence’ of black holes. [Photo: NASA, ESA, S. Baum and C. O’Dea (RIT), R. Perley and W. Cotton (NRAO/AUI/NSF), and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)] advertisement advertisement Earlier this year, astronomers went hunting for a supermassive black hole somewhere by the constellation Ara, nearly 8,000 light-years from Earth. But instead of one mega black hole, they made a startling discovery: a congregation of many mini black holes, maybe 40 or 50 of them, orbiting frenetically within the dense core of a globular star cluster. advertisement advertisement Never mind the implications of such colossal forces of nature found in close proximity, where they could potentially merge to create a galactic behemoth that could power a distant quasar. The more important question now is: What do you call a group of black holes?