Related papers: Monster black holes
A discussion at a Scientific American level of the idea that the constituents of the dark mater in galactic halos are primordial intermediate-mass black holes with masses between ten and one hundred thousand times the solar mass.
Black holes are fascinating objects. As a class of solutions to the Einstein equations they have been studied a great deal, yielding a wealth of theoretical results. But do they really exist? What do astronomers really mean when they claim…
Following a short account of the history of the idea of black holes, we present a review of the current status of the search for observational evidence of their existence aimed at an audience of relativists rather than astronomers or…
Stars with an initial mass more than ~25 Msun are thought to ultimately become black holes. Then stellar-mass black holes should be ubiquitous but fewer than 20 have been found in our Galaxy to date, all of which have been found through…
This is a pedagogical review of recent results on the interactions of central massive black holes with stars very near them, focused on the black hole in the center of the Milky Way. Table of contents: [1] Introduction [2] Stellar dynamics…
Models of superdense star clusters at the center of galaxies are investigated to see whether such objects can be stable and long-lived based on evaporation and collision time-scales and stability criteria. We find that physically reasonable…
In the framework of Randall-Sundrum model, we discuss the evolution of microscopic black holes created by cosmic particles hitting a neutron or a strange star. We set up the general equations of evolution for the black hole mass and…
The evolution of our Universe is strongly influenced by the attractive force of gravity. A key aspect of this evolution, therefore, is the merging of galaxies. Here, we explore the role of mergers in shaping the properties of massive…
Significant historic cosmic evolution for the formation rate of stellar black holes is inferred from current theoretical models of the evolution of massive stars, the multiple observations of compact stellar remnants in the near and distant…
We make a case for the existence for ultra-massive black holes (UMBHs) in the Universe, but argue that there exists a likely upper limit to black hole masses of the order of $M \sim 10^{10} \msun$. We show that there are three strong lines…
Supermassive black holes (SMBHs) are common in local galactic nuclei, and SMBHs as massive as several billion solar masses already exist at redshift z=6. These earliest SMBHs may grow by the combination of radiation-pressure-limited…
We performed a series of direct N-body simulations with the aim to follow the dynamical evolution of a galaxy cluster (GC) ($M_{clus}\simeq 10^{14} M_{\odot}$) in different environment. The results show the formation of heavy sub-structures…
This paper reviews the subject of intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) with masses between those of "stellar-mass" and "super-massive" black holes. The existence of IMBHs is a real possibility: they might plausibly have formed as remnants…
Supermassive black holes with masses of millions to billions of solar masses are commonly found in the centers of galaxies. Astronomers seek to image jet formation using radio interferometry, but still suffer from insufficient angular…
The merger of two black holes is one of the most extraordinary events in the natural world. Made of pure gravity, the holes combine to form a single hole, emitting a strong burst of gravitational radiation. Ground-based detectors are…
We perform fully relativistic simulations of the head-on collisions between intermediate-mass black holes and very massive stars. Such collisions are expected to occur in dense stellar clusters and may play an important role in growing the…
The most distant quasar yet discovered sets constraints on the formation mechanism of black holes. Its light spectrum has tantalizing features that are expected to be observed before the reionization epoch ended.
Observations of elliptical galaxies suggest that black holes (BHs) might serve as dark energy candidates, coupled to the expansion of the Universe. According to this hypothesis, the mass of a BH could increase as the Universe expands. BH…
Supermassive stars, with masses greater than a million solar masses, are possible progenitors of supermassive black holes in galactic nuclei. Because of their short nuclear burning timescales, such objects can be formed only when matter is…
Since the 1990s, we have known that there is a super-massive black hole in every galaxy, and that its mass is proportional to the mass of the bulge. To better understand how these black holes were formed, in symbiosis with their galaxies,…