All articles tagged with #intermediate mass black holes
Researchers have created an animation depicting the suspected intermediate-mass black hole HLX-1 ripping apart a star, providing insights into these elusive objects that bridge stellar and supermassive black holes, and highlighting their importance in understanding black hole evolution.
NASA's Hubble and Chandra observatories have identified a potential intermediate-mass black hole, NGC 6099 HLX-1, located in a galaxy 450 million light-years away, which is likely consuming a star, providing insights into black hole formation and evolution.
Scientists detected the largest black hole merger ever, resulting in a black hole 225 times the sun's mass, challenging existing theories about black hole formation, especially in the mass gap between stellar and supermassive black holes, using gravitational wave data from the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA collaboration.
Recent studies led by Vanderbilt scientists have provided new insights into the origins of intermediate-mass black holes, including the largest black hole collisions ever recorded, and highlight the potential of future lunar detectors and space missions like LISA to further understand these cosmic phenomena.
Recent studies have provided new evidence of intermediate-mass black holes, revealing their properties and potential origins through gravitational wave data from LIGO and Virgo, and highlighting future detection prospects with space-based observatories like LISA and lunar detectors.
The next generation of gravitational wave (GW) observatories, such as the Einstein Telescope and the Cosmic Explorer, could detect mergers of intermediate mass black holes, which have masses between 100 and one million solar masses. These observatories would expand our understanding of black holes and their role in the formation of supermassive black holes at the center of galaxies. Detecting these mergers would also help narrow uncertainties about the pair-instability mass-gap and shed light on the origin and evolution of black hole populations across cosmic epochs.
Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have found a strong candidate for an intermediate-sized black hole, weighing roughly 800 solar masses, at the heart of the closest globular star cluster to Earth, located 6,000 light-years away. The suspected object can't be seen, but its mass is calculated by studying the motion of stars caught in its gravitational field. Hubble's unique capabilities have been used to zero-in on the core of the globular star cluster Messier 4 to go black-hole hunting with higher precision than in previous searches.
New 3D computer simulations by Northwestern University-led astrophysicists suggest that intermediate-mass black holes, if they exist, devour wayward stars like messy toddlers, taking a few bites and then flinging the remains across the galaxy. The simulations also provide astronomers with new clues to help pinpoint these hidden giants within our night sky. Intermediate-mass black holes are about 10 to 10,000 times more massive than stellar remnant black holes but not nearly as massive as supermassive black holes.
Astronomers have proposed a new method to hunt for intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) using ripples in space-time caused by their motions through the center of the Milky Way. IMBHs are elusive and could help piece together the formation history of black holes. The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), a planned gravitational wave detector, could potentially detect IMBHs if they have a mass range from 1,000 to 100,000 solar masses. The proposed method is a longshot, but it just might work.