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Scientists have found evidence of the existence of an intermediate-mass black hole in the 47 Tucanae (NGC 104) cluster:
All known black holes fall into two categories: small, stellar-mass black holes weighing a few Suns, and supermassive black holes weighing[1] millions or billions of Suns. Astronomers expect that intermediate-mass black holes weighing 100 - 10,000 Suns also exist, but so far no conclusive proof of such middleweights has been found. Today, astronomers are announcing new evidence that an intermediate-mass black hole (IMBH) weighing 2,200 Suns is hiding at the center of the globular star cluster 47 Tucanae.
"We want to find intermediate-mass black holes because they are the missing link between stellar-mass and supermassive black holes. They may be the primordial seeds that grew into the monsters we see in the centers of galaxies today," says lead author Bulent Kiziltan of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA).
This work appears in the Feb. 9, 2017, issue of the prestigious science journal Nature [DOI: 10.1038/nature21361] [DX].
47 Tucanae is a 12-billion-year-old star cluster located 13,000 light-years from Earth in the southern constellation of Tucana the Toucan. It contains hundreds of thousands of stars in a ball only about 120 light-years in diameter. It also holds about two dozen pulsars that were important targets of this investigation.
This isn't the first time that scientists have thought they found an intermediate-mass black hole (see GCIRS 13E).
[1] Ed Note: Yes, I am aware that weigh is inappropriate in this context and that the proper term is mass. This is, however, a direct quote and that is what they wrote. --martyb
(Score: 2) by martyb on Friday February 10 2017, @02:13PM
I found this article interesting. We've identified black holes on the size of some small multiple of solar masses. And ones that are millions or billions(!) of solar masses. How do you get supermassive black holes? It would seem reasonable that solar-mass black holes acreted mass over time and grew into being supermassive black holes. But, if that IS the case, where are they? Why are we having so much difficulty finding them?
Curiouser and curiouser (with apologies to to Alice in Wonderland).
Are there any Soylentils who can shed some light on this mystery?
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 10 2017, @04:28PM
I think there is some argument about whether black holes can form:
http://www.cscamm.umd.edu/tiglio/GR2012/Syllabus_files/EinsteinSchwarzschild.pdf [umd.edu]
The argument then goes, if they exist, they must be primordial (formed during the big bang)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by dry on Saturday February 11 2017, @05:03AM
I think there is some question whether super massive black holes formed by accretion. They seem to be around as far back as we can see, which doesn't leave much time for a black hole to eat the equivalent of 1% of the Milky Way, especially as galaxies seem to have been smaller then. Perhaps they're an artifact of the big bang?
What I find interesting is the global clusters, hundreds of thousands of stars contained in a volume of only 120 light years diameter. Imagine the sky, at least if a planet could form there (no metals). Must have been a pretty dense gas cloud to form so many stars as well as the black hole.