Related papers: Astrophysical Evidence for Black Holes
The most compelling evidences for the existence of stellar-mass black holes have been obtained through observations of X-ray binary systems. The application of classical methods and the development of new techniques have allowed us to…
The existence of supermassive collapsed objects in the cores of most galaxies poses still-unanswered questions. First, how did they form, and how does their mass depend on the properties of the host galaxy? Second, can observations probe…
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…
The existence of extremely dark and compact astronomical bodies is by now a well established observational fact. On the other hand, classical General Relativity predicts the existence of black holes which fit very well with the…
Black holes, an extreme consequence of the mathematics of General Relativity, have long been suspected of being the prime movers of quasars, which emit more energy than any other objects in the Universe. Recent evidence indicates that…
While until recently they were often considered as exotic objects of dubious existence, in the last decades there have been overwhelming observational evidences for the presence of stellar mass black holes in binary systems, supermassive…
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…
We review the state of the evidence for the existence and observational appearance of supermassive black hole binaries. Such objects are expected from standard hierarchical galaxy evolution to form after two galaxies, each containing a…
Most X-ray novae (aka soft X-ray transients) contain black hole primaries. In particular, the large mass functions measured for six X-ray novae directly clinch the argument (within general relativity) that they contain black holes. These…
Current phenomenology suggests the presence of a compact baryon-poor energy source to cosmological gamma-ray bursts reacting to high-density matter. The association of short and long gamma-ray bursts with hyper- and suspended accretion onto…
This article is based on a pair of lectures given at the 2005 SLAC Summer Institute. Our goal is to motivate why most physicists and astrophysicists accept the hypothesis that the most massive, compact objects seen in many astrophysical…
Very compact objects probe extreme gravitational fields and may be the key to understand outstanding puzzles in fundamental physics. These include the nature of dark matter, the fate of spacetime singularities, or the loss of unitarity in…
Proof that black holes exist will likely require confirmation of the existence of event horizons. The common assumption that the mere existence of large compact masses proves the case for black holes is an unwarranted extrapolation of…
The article summarizes the observational evidence for the existence of massive black holes, as well as the current knowledge about their abundance, their mass and spin distributions, and their cosmic evolution within and together with their…
It is thought that the final product of the gravitational collapse is a Kerr black hole and astronomers have discovered several good astrophysical candidates. While there is some indirect evidence suggesting that the latter have an event…
In the last four decades different programs have been carried out aiming at understanding the final fate of gravitational collapse of massive bodies once some prescriptions for the behaviour of gravity in the strong field regime are…
Black holes are a common feature of the Universe. They are observed as stellar mass black holes spread throughout galaxies and as supermassive objects in their centres. Observations of stars orbiting close to the centre of our Galaxy…
Black holes are popping up all over the place: in compact binary X-ray sources and GRBs, in quasars, AGNs and the cores of all bulge galaxies, in binary black holes and binary black hole-neutron stars, and maybe even in the LHC! Black holes…
The existence of cosmological compact objects with very strong gravity is a prediction of General Relativity and an exact solution of the Einstein equations. These objects are called black holes and recently we had the first observations of…
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…