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'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."
Was it a true random seed?
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.
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
It detects radiation in the submillimetre wavelength, and it's 10m across. I've got a 0.1m hundred-nanometer setup (a basic Newtonian, small optical mirror).
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
Unless you're in an unusually dense star cluster, sooner or later, you're going to run out of mass.
The reason astronomers seem to dispute the potential for the existence of these intermediate mass black holes is that no one has yet shown convincing evidence that they exist, nor do they have any convincing theories on how they could be formed. No star is massive enough to have collapsed into the alleged IMBH GCIRS 13E, which is supposed to be 1300 solar masses. For several smaller stellar black holes to coalesce into something like GCIRS 13E, that seems far less likely. Away from galactic cores where everything is very close together, stellar collisions are extremely rare. Collisions between black holes considerably more so. Contrary to popular perception black holes are not the all-sucking vacuum cleaners of the universe. Their gravity is not so different from the gravity of any other object, except beyond the event horizon. A stellar black hole five times the mass of our sun would have no more ability to attract things to itself with gravity than a star of five solar masses. So while black holes could collide, in interstellar space they don't do so very frequently, as much of interstellar space is empty, and as such, a few hundred of them coming together to form an IMBH of a thousand or so solar masses is extremely unlikely to say the least. In galactic cores on the other hand things are so close together that accretion of stuff into a black hole there would tend to continue until there's a supermassive black hole, not stopping at the thousand or so solar masses that IMBHs are hypothesized to be. The only other explanation for the formation of IMBHs is that they are primordial black holes created a fraction of a second into the birth of the universe, but this is even more shaky to say the least. Regardless of the explanation, the fact is observational evidence for IMBHs is disputed, and is nowhere near as conclusive as the evidence for stellar and supermassive black holes is. Granted, they could exist in principle, but if observational evidence is flimsy and the conditions necessary for creating one so unlikely then one might be justified in doubting their existence.
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
Actually, every black hole is the same size and they're quite small. I believe what they meant was mass.