Did Supermassive Black Holes Form Directly?
MIL/UT, Sep 11, 2007. Author: September 11, 2007 – Astronomers now believe there’s a supermassive black hole at the centre of almost every galaxy in the Universe. These black holes can have millions, or even hundreds of millions of times the mass of the Sun. Unlike stellar mass black holes, the supermassive versions might have formed differently, going from a cloud of gas directly to a black hole – skipping the star stage entirely. Since their discovery, astronomers still don’t really know how supermassive black holes got going. But there they are, inside most galaxies. In fact, quasar observations show that supermassive black holes were present in the early Universe. Quasars are some of the brightest objects in the Universe, blazing from the radiation emitted by supermassive black holes actively consuming material. One possibility is that these monsters had humble beginnings, starting out as a massive star, going supernova, and then becoming a black hole. It’s a process astronomers un
