A Chinese-led research team in Beijing has discovered a surprisingly huge stellar black hole about 14,000 light-years away from Earth – our "backyard" of the universe – forcing scientists to re-examine how such black holes form.

The Milky Way galaxy is estimated to contain 100 million stellar black holes,– cosmic bodies formed by the collapse of massive stars and so dense even light cannot escape. Until now, scientists have estimated the mass of an individual stellar black hole in our galaxy at no more than 20 times that of the Sun.

But the new discovery has toppled that assumption.