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Supermassive Black Holes:
The Facts and why they Matter
Riley Srogus
Salt Lake Community College
Professor M. Weiss
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Understanding black holes, specifically supermassive black holes, is essential in
astronomy. However, it isn’t the easiest thing to comprehend since we can’t even see them. My
purpose in this paper is to understand what a supermassive black hole is, how they are created,
and why they are essential in our universe. This paper focuses on supermassive black holes,
which are one the three types, stellar black holes, miniature black holes, and supermassive
black holes.
Before jumping into that it’s important to know where the theory of black holes came
from. The first idea of black holes came from John Michell in 1783, where he speculated that
there may be objects with enough mass to have an escape velocity greater than the speed of
light. Multiple scientists came up with theories about such massive objects but Albert Einstein
put legs to idea of black holes with his Theory of General relativity.
To begin comprehending supermassive black holes, we have to first ask, “What even is
a black hole? According to Dunbar (2008), black holes are simply defined as, “… a place in space
where gravity pulls so much that even light [cannot] get out. The gravity is so strong because
matter has been squeezed into a tiny space. This can happen when a star is dying.” We see that
black holes are actually one of the possibilities that a high mass star can end in. This brings us to
another question, “What separates supermassive black holes from their inferior celestial
brethren?”
Standard black holes, known as stellar black holes, typically have masses less than about
100 times that of our sun. In a different manner, supermassive black holes contain anywhere
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from a million and a billion times more mass than these stellar black holes. Most of these
supermassive black holes are too far away to even be observed.
Because the gravitational pull of all black holes on the space around them, not even
light is able to escape from this force, which makes them extremely difficult to see. At first the
only evidence available for supermassive black holes came from the existence of quasars in
remote active galaxies (Supermassive). These quasars were radiating over a trillion times as
much energy as our sun, while only being the size of our solar system. Which the only solution
to how this could happen in such a small space was supermassive black holes. As time has
passed, we have been able to find more direct evidence for supermassive black holes by
observing how material orbits around the center of galaxies. For the gasses and baryonic
matter to be moving around at high orbital velocities that can only be explained by a strong
gravitational field in a small area of space.
The closest supermassive black hole that we are actually able to observe happens to be
at the center of our own galaxy, it is known as Sagittarius A*. Not only is this supermassive
black hole close to home, it was also the first one to be named. The two researchers who
hypothesized of its existence were Donald Lynden-Bell and Martin Rees. The official date for its
discovery was February 13th 1974, and was promptly named on February 15th. This particular
supermassive black hole contains roughly 4 million solar masses (Black Hole Facts). Now, this
may sound like quite a large object to exist in space. However, the largest black hole to date
weighs in at 21 billion solar masses and is found at the center of the Coma Cluster, which is
cluster of over 1,000 galaxies.
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So why are supermassive black holes so important? According to R. GaBany “black holes
are not only common throughout the Cosmos but they play a fundamental role in the formation
and evolution of the Universe we inhabit today.” Evidence from multiple studies show that the
size of the supermassive black hole is directly in correlation to the galaxy in which it resides.
Some researchers also have found that with larger black holes at the centers of galaxies, affects
the speed in which its outer stars travel.
Even though it’s normally perceived that black holes are extraterrestrial destroyers of
material with their cosmic feeding frenzy, we wouldn’t be here without them. These massive
black holes had jets of high energy particles and radiation shooting off of them, which could
very well be the roots of the very ground that we stand upon.
Every day we find out new and fantastic things about the cosmos, but just earlier in
2016 we found something new about supermassive black that changes just how common we
thought black holes really were. According to NASA, a massive 17 billion solar mass black hole
was found in a grouping of around 20 galaxies. It makes sense to find gargantuan black holes in
areas like the aforementioned Coma Cluster, but in places with so little non-black hole mass, it’s
very out of place. The lead discoverer Chung-Pei Ma also says that this black hole is, “10 times
more massive than they had predicted for a galaxy of this mass.” The research team believes
that this black hole is so massive as it merged with another black hole long ago.
It’s still quite difficult to understand what a black hole really is, as no one has seen one
yet, and if they got close enough to do so, you wouldn’t hear back from them, I believe that my
paper has discussed some of the most important facts about supermassive black holes, and
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why without them, we might not even be here. As time goes on, hopefully the scientific world
will be able to obtain more in depth knowledge of all kinds of black holes.
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Bibliography
(2016, April 6). Retrieved December 02, 2016, from
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/behemoth-black-hole-found-in-anunlikely-place
Black Hole Facts - Interesting Facts about Black Holes. (2016). Retrieved December 02, 2016,
from http://space-facts.com/black-holes/
Dunbar, B. (2008, September 30). What is A Black Hole. Retrieved December 01, 2016, from
https://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/k-4/stories/nasa-knows/what-is-a-blackhole-k4.html
GaBany, R. J. (n.d.). The relationship between black holes and galaxies. Retrieved December 02,
2016, from
http://www.cosmotography.com/images/supermassive_blackholes_drive_galaxy_evolu
tion_2.html
Stellar Black Hole | COSMOS. (n.d.). Retrieved December 01, 2016, from
http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/cosmos/S/Stellar Black Hole
Supermassive Black Hole | COSMOS. (n.d.). Retrieved December 02, 2016, from
http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/cosmos/S/Supermassive Black Hole