In theory, these scenarios indicate that
black holes are formed when a massive volume of mass exists at a certain spot in space.
Typically, stars will only form
black holes with masses of up to 45 M?.
The
black hole at the center of NGC 3147 is approximately 130 million light-years from Earth.
It was Einstein's theory of general relativity that predicted the formation of
black holes.
This and the lack of any observed object at that location strongly suggests an intermediate-mass
black hole. By analyzing other anomalous clouds, we hope to expose other quiet
black holes."
Supermassive
black holes might have grown out of the collapse of the first generation of stars, which would have given birth to 100-solar-mass "seeds." The abundance of early stars means this kind of seed would have been common.
The idea that a plethora of smaller
black holes may surround the "supermassive" hole at the heart of the Milky Way dates back decades.
For around 20 years, astrophysicists have predicted that thousands of smaller
black holes should exist around Sagittarius A* because it is surrounded by enormous halos of gas and dust, which provide a perfect breeding ground for the birth and, ultimately the death, of stars.
Black holes are objects of very high density with a gravitational pull so strong that even light cannot escape them.
When the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, LIGO, glimpsed gravitational waves from two merging
black holes, scientists were surprised at how large the
black holes were--about 30 times the mass of the sun (SN: 3/5/16, p.
The University of Southampton is part of an international collaboration set to harness observations from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and NASAs X-ray space telescope, Hitomi, to better understand how
black holes grow.
The newly discovered supersized
black hole resides in the center of a massive elliptical galaxy, NGC 1600, located in a cosmic backwater, a small grouping of 20 or so galaxies, said lead discoverer Chung-Pei Ma, a University of California-Berkeley astronomer and head of the MASSIVE Survey, a research project analyzing vast galaxies and supermassive
black holes in the universe.
