'Seeds' of Supermassive Black Holes Discovered

astroengine writes "The very existence of intermediate black holes (IBMHs) is in dispute, but a group of astronomers of Keio University, Japan, have found the potential locations of three IMBH candidates inside previously unknown star clusters near the center of the Milky Way. Using the 10-meter Atacama Submillimeter Telescope Experiment in the Atacama Desert, Chile, and the 45-meter Nobeyama Radio Observatory in Japan, they hunted for the emissions from molecular gases associated with supernovae in star clusters — what they discovered could help evolve our view on how supermassive black holes form."

Comments

Really?

[jacerie]

"The very existence of intermediate black holes is in dispute..." By definition, An Intermediate-mass black hole is a black hole whose mass is significantly more than stellar black holes (ten times to several tens of times the mass of the Sun) yet far less than supermassive black holes (one million to many million times the mass of the Sun). A healthy dose of common sense and a basic understanding of gravity makes it pretty clear that any stellar black hole has the potential to become an IMBH. I appreciate the efforts to find existing IMBHs but to dispute the potential for their existence is ridiculous.

Re:Really?

[History's Coming To]

Incorrect, you're letting intuition get in the way. Space is big. Really big. And even if you collapse our entire solar system into a black hole then it would still have exactly the same mass as it always did, so from a distance nothing changes much. Yeah, there's a black hole where there used to be a star and some assorted debris, but it just keeps on cruising through space like it always did.

The chances of it reaching enough other bits of matter to gain a million times its own mass aren't very good, and the event horizon of a solar mass black hole is only 6km across, if it even hit another solar system it would have to be a slow pass or direct hit on the star, anything else would just perturb a few orbits and pass straight through.

Black holes also evaporate with time (due to Hawking radiation), the smaller they are the faster they evaporate. Our solar mass black hole will be nothing but an expanding cloud of weak black body photons unless a very unlikely series of events occurs.

Of course, they could merge with a nearby supermassive if they get caught up in it (e.g. Sag A*), but at no point in that whole story is there an Intermediate Mass Black Hole, the question stands.

incorrect

[slashmydots]

Actually, every black hole is the same size and they're quite small. I believe what they meant was mass.