Related papers: Monster black holes
Supermassive black holes have generally been recognized as the most destructive force in nature. But in recent years, they have undergone a dramatic shift in paradigm. These objects may have been critical to the formation of structure in…
I begin by summarizing the evidence that there is a close relationship between the evolution of galaxies and supermassive black holes. They evidently share a common fuel source, and feedback from the black hole may be needed to suppress…
This article documents our ongoing search for the elusive "intermediate-mass" black holes. These would bridge the gap between the approximately ten solar mass "stellar-mass" black holes that are the end-product of the life of a massive…
The past 10 years have witnessed a change of perspective in the way astrophysicists think about massive black holes (MBHs), which are now considered to have a major role in the evolution of galaxies. This appreciation was driven by the…
The study of galaxy mergers and supermassive binary black holes (SMBBHs) is central to our understanding of the galaxy and black hole assembly and (co-)evolution at the epoch of structure formation and throughout cosmic history. Galaxy…
Two interesting hypotheses about black holes have been proposed. The older one states that microscopic black holes can be accountable for the observed dark matter density. The newer one states that black holes are coupled to the expansion…
Observational work conducted over the last few decades indicates that all massive galaxies have supermassive black holes at their centres. Although the luminosities and brightness fluctuations of quasars in the early Universe suggest that…
Stellar-mass black holes (BHs), with masses comparable to stars, are a major constituent of our Milky Way galaxy. This chapter describes the landscape of challenging, and long-sought efforts to identify these objects in the Galaxy. The…
Supermassive black holes have been discovered at the centers of galaxies, and also in globular clusters. The data shows correlations between the black hole mass and the elliptical galaxy mass or globular cluster mass. It is shown that this…
There is a lot of current astrophysical evidence and interest in intermediate mass black holes, ranging from a few hundred to several thousand solar masses. The active galaxy M82 and the globular cluster in M31, for example, are known to…
Black holes are defined as a region in spacetime where gravity is so strong that particles and electromagnetic radiation cannot escape. According to their mass, they are classified into three types: stellar-mass black holes,…
Galaxies with Milky Way-like stellar masses have a wide range of bulge and black hole masses; in turn, these correlate with other properties such as star formation history. While many processes may drive bulge formation, major and minor…
Black holes with hundreds to thousands of solar masses are more massive than can be formed from a single star in the current universe, yet the best candidates for these objects are not located in gas-rich environments where gradual…
This article reviews the current status of black hole astrophysics, focusing on topics of interest to a physics audience. Astronomers have discovered dozens of compact objects with masses greater than 3 solar masses, the likely maximum mass…
Collapsed objects have definitely been observed: some are stellar-mass objects, the endpoint of massive stars; others, millions of times more massive, have been discovered in the cores of most galaxies. Their formation poses some…
In accordance with current models of the accelerating Universe as a spacetime with a positive cosmological constant, new results about a cosmological upper bound for the area of stable marginally outer trapped surfaces are found taking into…
Mass estimates, based on scaling relationships, are presented of central black holes in luminous quasars at a range of redshifts (z < 0.5, 1.2 ~< z ~< 6.3). The data show that very massive (about 10^9 solar masses or larger) black holes…
A review on recent astronomical observations indicating to unexpectedly abundant population of the contemporary and $ z \sim 10 $ universe by massive black holes in all mass ranges are is presented. It is argued that these black holes are…
Supermassive black holes have been detected in all galaxies that contain bulge components when the galaxies observed were close enough so that the searches were feasible. Together with the observation that bigger black holes live in bigger…
A brief overview of the methods commonly used to determine or estimate the black hole mass in quiescent or active galaxies is presented and it is argued that the use of mass-scaling relations is both a reliable and the preferred method to…