Scientists have now proposed that thousands of planets could be orbiting around black holes just like planets in our solar system orbit around the sun.
New research suggests that planets are formed around a black hole. This is in sharp contrast to earlier beliefs that said planets were formed from pieces of fluffy dust that settle in a disc around a young star said a report in Independent.
However, the new research suggests that the birth of a planet could actually happen in far more extreme environments like a black hole, the report added.
Speaking about the same, Keiichi Wada, a professor at Kagoshima University in Japan was reported as saying that with the right conditions, planets could even form around a black hole.
According to the news report, the paper examining the possibilities, titled 'Planet Formation around Super Massive Black Holes in the Active Galactic Nuclei', is slated to be published in Astrophysical Journal.
It sees researchers looking at heavy discs around supermassive black holes that are present in the middle of galaxies.
According to them, the disc can be immense and the planetary system that grows out of them can be equally big as well.
Citing Eiichiro Kokubo, a professor at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan who studies planet formation, the news report said that their calculation shows that thousands of planets with 10 times the mass of Earth could be formed around 10 light-years from a black hole.
Researchers suggest that discs around a supermassive black hole can have almost 100,000 times the mass of the sun in the form of dust, which could eventually form planets.
