When a black hole is simply too big

One of the distinguishing features of black holes is that they are hard to see. Astronomers looking for them sometimes have luck, but at the cost a star: when a ravenous black hole tears off and devours stellar material from an orbiting star, the resulting accretion disk emits radiation that can be measured. Almost all known black holes have been discovered this way.

But it seems logical that those aren’t the only ones out there. Black holes are formed when heavy stars die. And many of these...