The international team find that rather than the conventional formation scenarios involving 'normal' matter, supermassive black holes could instead form directly from dark matter in high density regions in the centres of galaxies.
Recently The Low Frequency Array released the first data on its sky survey. They have only mapped 4% of the northern sky so far, but have already mapped 25,000 supermassive black holes.
It is thought that the upper mass limit for galactic black holes is around 100 billion solar masses, but new research suggests the mass limit could be much higher - more than a million times greater than the largest galactic black holes.
Astronomers have found six galaxies lying around a supermassive black hole when the Universe was less than a billion years old. This is the first time such a close grouping has been seen so soon after the Big Bang.
The 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Sir Roger Penrose and to Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez for their discovery of the supermassive black hole at the Center of the Milky Way.
The black hole’s mass is about 8,000 times bigger than the black hole in the centre of the Milky Way. If the Milky Way’s black hole wanted to grow that fat, it would have to swallow two thirds of all the stars in our galaxy.
Supermassive black holes are gravitational powerhouses. When hot gas surrounding them is squeezed by gravity and electromagnetic fields, it can emit tremendous amounts of energy, including high-energy neutrinos.
The prominent X-shape of PKS 2014-55 is made up of two pairs of giant lobes consisting of hot jets of electrons. These jets spurt outwards from a supermassive black hole at the galaxy's heart.
The biggest explosion seen in the universe has been found. This record-breaking, gargantuan eruption came from a black hole in a distant galaxy cluster hundreds of millions of light years away.
Astronomers have found six objects orbiting Sagittarius A* that are unlike anything in the galaxy. These objects look like gas but behave like stars. They are so peculiar that they have been assigned a brand-new class - what astronomers are calling G objects.
Astronomers have measured a 40 billion solar mass black hole in the Holm 15A galaxy. Their results could lead to even more massive black holes.
Extensive observations indicated the presence of three supermassive back holes in the three galaxies NGC 6240 that are the process of merging. Up until now, such a concentration of supermassive black holes had never been discovered in the universe.
A titanic, expanding beam of energy sprang from close to the supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way just 3.5 million years ago, sending a cone-shaped burst of radiation through both poles of the galaxy and out into deep space.
Astronomers have spotted three supermassive black holes (SMBHs) at the center of three colliding galaxies a billion light years away from Earth. That alone is unusual, but the three black holes are also glowing in x-ray emissions.
Observing Sagitarius A ( a supermassive balck hole in the center of our galaxy ) with the Keck's telescope, scientists just watched as its brightness bloomed to over 75 times normal for a few hours. Astronomers aren’t certain what caused the flaring.
