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Supermassive Black Holes

Million- to billion-solar-mass black holes at galactic centers, observable indirectly through accretion-powered emission.

Current stories

scienceConfirmed2 publishers

X-ray data trace the radio 'Treble Clef' to a black hole outburst and a later cluster merger

A team led by Andrea Botteon used Chandra and eROSITA X-rays to trace the radio 'Treble Clef' to a black hole outburst and a cluster collision. The authors call the two-stage origin likely; the merger evidence comes from the shape of the cluster's hot gas.

Publishers:nasa.gov phys.org space.com

Perspective Coverage

3 publishers
Builder
Builder 15%
Operator
Operator 7%
Investor
Investor 78%

Reality

Evidence62
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+10
Incentives
Not scored
Confidence60
scienceOne report1 publisher

Bulgeless galaxies in DESI data keep black holes on the usual stellar-mass track

Oxford-led astronomers using DESI found 546 bulgeless galaxies with feeding black holes sit on the same black hole-to-stellar mass relation as bulged ones. A bulge usually signals past mergers, so the result favours growth fed by bars and spiral arms, if that proxy holds.

Publishers:phys.org

Reality

Evidence55
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+15
Incentives
Not scored
Confidence50
scienceOne report1 publisher

The spin the tidal disruption models left out may explain fading black hole flares

A Syracuse-led team says a star that arrives already rotating fast cannot be spun up much further, which lets each weaker pass finally look weaker. Four of about ten known repeaters fade.

Reality

Evidence50
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+15
Incentives35
Confidence55
scienceOne report1 publisher

Illuminated gas pins a quasar pair's depth to half a million light-years in simulations

Redshifts of double quasars can be wrong about depth by as much as 10 million light-years, because the black hole's own outflows spoil the velocity. Huanqing Chen's team tested reading the separation from lit-up gas.

Publishers:phys.org

Reality

Evidence52
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+14
Incentives62
Confidence55
scienceOne report1 publisher

The case for 'black hole stars' rests on two of Webb's little red dots

Webb picks up little red dots in nearly every image it takes, but two of them look like nothing in the ground-based archives, and the teams that found them say the pair hides a newborn supermassive black hole inside a bright hydrogen envelope.

Reality

Evidence46
Adoption33
Hype gap+20
Incentives55
Confidence52
scienceOne report1 publisher

eROSITA's second release logs 1.9 million X-ray point sources from three stacked sky scans

Three stacked passes over the whole sky produced the largest public X-ray source catalog to date. Most of what it found lies outside the Milky Way, and the consortium says X-ray detection is only the first step.

Publishers:phys.org

Reality

Evidence58
Adoption45
Hype gap+20
Incentives60
Confidence62