Month: September 2022

WHAT PERSPECTIVE!! “The idea of IMBHs as SMBH seeds is appealing because of the sheer difficulty in creating a 109 M⊙ SMBH in less than one billion years.” (IMBHs = intermediate mass black holes; SMBH = supermassive black holes). https://lnkd.in/dYX7TQV View in LinkedIn

ORIGINS OF HUGENESS. “Several theories have been postulated for the origin of SMBH seeds. Some of the leading candidates are: (a) Population III star remnants (100–1000 M⊙, form at 15 < z < 30), (b) Direct collapse black holes (104–106 M⊙, form at 10 < z < 20), and (c) Collapsing stellar clusters (∼103 M⊙, form at high or low z).” (M⊙ = unit of celestial mass; SMBH = supermassive black hole). https://lnkd.in/dYX7TQV View in LinkedIn

HEISENBERG, BOHR, AND EINSTEIN. “This exploration brought them in contact with a strange and unexpected reality that shattered the foundations of their world view and forced them to think in entirely new ways. The material world they observed no longer appeared as a machine, made up of a multitude of separate objects, but rather as an indivisible whole; a network of relationships that included the human observer in an essential way.” (Welcome to Wonderland!). https://lnkd.in/d9WF55y View in LinkedIn

The gynoecium at its best. View in LinkedIn

ORIGIN OF SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLES. “Population III stars are expected to be common in the early universe, forming in every galaxy in its first epochs of star formation. Direct collapse black holes, in contrast, are predicted to be more rare, because they require a special set of conditions in order to form.” https://lnkd.in/dYX7TQV View in LinkedIn

HUNTING THE SNARK. “Another avenue for hunting down IMBHs exists in off-center compact sources in large galaxies. The process of hierarchical merging results in the tidal disruption of low-mass galaxies as they enter larger halos. If those low-mass galaxies host IMBHs, the black holes will wander in the larger galaxy as they inspiral toward the center.” (IMBHs = intermediate mass black holes). https://lnkd.in/dYX7TQV View in LinkedIn

HIDDEN GENERATORS. “Our own Milky Way hosts such postulated objects; gas clouds near the Galactic Center possessing unusually large velocity dispersions are thought to harbor hidden IMBHs.” (IMBHs = intermediate mass black holes). https://lnkd.in/dYX7TQV View in LinkedIn

PROMISING CANDIDATE. “If such objects were to experience a rapid accretion event, they would be seen as (likely off-nuclear) ultra-luminous X-ray sources (ULXs). ULXs are common in star-forming regions and are often attributed to neutron stars or stellar black holes experiencing Eddington or super-Eddington accretion, or beamed emission.” (ULXs = ultra-luminous X-ray sources). https://lnkd.in/dYX7TQV View in LinkedIn

QUESTION OF OPTICS. “One major challenge for observations of IMBHs is dynamical. The radius of influence of a black hole scales linearly with its mass; thus it is difficult to detect the influence of IMBHs on nearby stars without extremely high spatial resolution.” (IMBHs = intermediate mass black holes). https://lnkd.in/dYX7TQV View in LinkedIn

POTENTIAL HUGENESS. “The existence of wandering IMBHs in high-mass galaxies will create a reservoir of IMBH-SMBH mergers waiting to happen. While some IMBHs will have dynamical friction timescales longer than a Hubble time, others will have orbits that decay and bring them into the centers of their hosts.” (IMBHs = intermediate mass black holes; SMBH = supermassive black holes). https://lnkd.in/dYX7TQV View in LinkedIn