[{"command":"openDialog","selector":"#drupal-modal","settings":null,"data":"\u003Cdiv id=\u0022republish_modal_form\u0022\u003E\u003Cform class=\u0022modal-form-example-modal-form ecl-form\u0022 data-drupal-selector=\u0022modal-form-example-modal-form\u0022 action=\u0022\/en\/article\/modal\/9436\u0022 method=\u0022post\u0022 id=\u0022modal-form-example-modal-form\u0022 accept-charset=\u0022UTF-8\u0022\u003E\u003Cp\u003EHorizon articles can be republished for free under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence.\u003C\/p\u003E\n \u003Cp\u003EYou must give appropriate credit. We ask you to do this by:\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n 1) Using the original journalist\u0027s byline\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n 2) Linking back to our original story\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n 3) Using the following text in the footer: This article was originally published in \u003Ca href=\u0027#\u0027\u003EHorizon, the EU Research and Innovation magazine\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\n \u003Cp\u003ESee our full republication guidelines \u003Ca href=\u0027\/horizon-magazine\/republish-our-stories\u0027\u003Ehere\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\n \u003Cp\u003EHTML for this article, including the attribution and page view counter, is below:\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cdiv class=\u0022js-form-item form-item js-form-type-textarea form-item-body-content js-form-item-body-content ecl-form-group ecl-form-group--text-area form-no-label ecl-u-mv-m\u0022\u003E\n \n\u003Cdiv\u003E\n \u003Ctextarea data-drupal-selector=\u0022edit-body-content\u0022 aria-describedby=\u0022edit-body-content--description\u0022 id=\u0022edit-body-content\u0022 name=\u0022body_content\u0022 rows=\u00225\u0022 cols=\u002260\u0022 class=\u0022form-textarea ecl-text-area\u0022\u003E\u003Ch2\u003EFinding the missing links of black hole astronomy\u003C\/h2\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003EThe weirdness exhibited by black holes boggles the mind. Formed when a star burns all its nuclear fuel and collapses under its own gravitation, black holes are such oddities that at one time, even Einstein didn\u2019t think they were possible.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003EThey are regions in space with such intense gravitation that not even light escapes their pull. Once magnificent shining stars burn out and shrink to a relatively tiny husk, all their mass is concentrated in a small space. Imagine our Sun with its diameter of roughly 1.4 million kilometres shrinking to a black hole the size of a small city just six kilometres across. This compactness gives black holes immense gravitational pull.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003ENot only do they trap light, black holes can shred any stars they encounter and even merge with each other. Events like this release bursts of energy that are detectable from billions of light years away.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003EThe \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/www.nobelprize.org\/prizes\/physics\/2020\/press-release\/\u0022\u003ENobel Prize in Physics 2020\u003C\/a\u003E was shared by scientists who discovered an invisible object at the heart of the Milky Way that pulls stars towards it. This is a supermassive black hole, or SMBH, and it has a mass that is millions of times that of our sun.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003E\u2018At the heart of every massive galaxy, we think there is a supermassive black hole,\u2019 said astrophysicist Dr Kenneth Duncan at the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh, UK. \u2018We also think they play a really important role in how galaxies form, including the Milky Way.\u2019\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EGalactic monsters \u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003ESupermassive black holes are gravitating monsters of the Universe. \u2018Black holes at the centre of galaxies can be between a million and a few billion times the mass of our Sun,\u2019 said Professor Phillip Best, astrophysicist at the University of Edinburgh.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cblockquote class=\u0022tw-text-center tw-text-blue tw-font-bold tw-text-2xl lg:tw-w-1\/2 tw-border-2 tw-border-blue tw-p-12 tw-my-8 lg:tw-m-12 lg:tw--ml-16 tw-float-left\u0022\u003E\n \u003Cspan class=\u0022tw-text-5xl tw-rotate-180\u0022\u003E\u201c\u003C\/span\u003E\n \u003Cp class=\u0022tw-font-serif tw-italic\u0022\u003EAt the heart of every massive galaxy, we think there is a supermassive black hole.\r\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n \u003Cfooter\u003E\n \u003Ccite class=\u0022tw-not-italic tw-font-normal tw-text-sm tw-text-black\u0022\u003EDr Kenneth Duncan, Royal Observatory \u003C\/cite\u003E\n \u003C\/footer\u003E\n\u003C\/blockquote\u003E\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003EThey pull in gas and dust from their surroundings, even objects as large as stars. Just before this material falls in towards the black hole\u2019s event horizon or point of no return, it moves quickly and heats up, emitting energy as energetic flashes. Powerful jets of material that emit radio waves may also spew out from this ingestion process.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003EThese can be detected on Earth using radio telescopes such as Europe\u2019s LOFAR, which has detectors in the UK, Ireland, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Poland and Latvia.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003EDuncan is tapping LOFAR observations to identify the massive black holes in a project called \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/cordis.europa.eu\/project\/id\/892117\u0022\u003EHIZRAD\u003C\/a\u003E. \u2018We can detect growing black holes further back in time,\u2019 said Duncan, \u2018with the goal being to find the very first and some of the most extreme black holes in the Universe.\u2019\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003ELOFAR can pinpoint even obscured black holes. Duncan has used artificial intelligence techniques to combine data from LOFAR and telescope surveys to identify objects of interest.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EBetter instruments\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003EBetter instruments will soon assist in this task. An upgrade to the William Herschel Telescope on La Palma, Spain, will allow it to observe thousands of galaxies at the same time. A spectroscope called \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/www.ralspace.stfc.ac.uk\/Pages\/WEAVE-at-the-William-Herschel-Telescope--.aspx\u0022\u003EWEAVE\u003C\/a\u003E has the potential to detect supermassive black holes and to observe star and galaxy formation. \u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003ERadio signals indicate that supermassive black holes exist from as early as the first 5-10% of the Universe\u2019s history. These are a billion solar masses, explained Best, who is the research supervisor.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003EThe surprising part is that these giants existed at the early stages of the Universe. \u2018You\u2019ve got to get all this mass into a very small volume and do it extremely quickly, in terms of the Universe\u2019s history,\u2019 said Best.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003EWe know that following the Big Bang, the Universe began as an expanding cloud of primordial matter. Studies of the cosmic background radiation indicate that eventually clumps of matter came together to form stars. However, \u2018The process where you form a blackhole as large as a billion solar masses is not fully understood,\u2019 said Best.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EIntermediate black holes\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003EWhile studies of SMBHs are ongoing, Dr Peter Jonker, astronomer at Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, is intrigued by the formation of black holes of intermediate scale.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003EHe is studying the possible existence of intermediate black holes (IMBH) \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/cordis.europa.eu\/project\/id\/647208\u0022\u003Ewith the imbh project\u003C\/a\u003E. He notes that supermassive black holes have been observed from when the Universe was only 600 million years old. Scientists estimate the overall age of the universe to be around 13.8 billion years.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003E\u2018The Universe started out like a homogenous soup of material, so how do you get clumps that weigh a billion times the mass of the sun in a very short time?\u2019 said Jonker.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003EWhile supermassive black holes might consume sun-like stars (called white dwarfs) in their entirety, IMBHs should be powerful enough to only shred them, emitting a revealing flash of energy.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cblockquote class=\u0022tw-text-center tw-text-blue tw-font-bold tw-text-2xl lg:tw-w-1\/2 tw-border-2 tw-border-blue tw-p-12 tw-my-8 lg:tw-m-12 lg:tw--ml-16 tw-float-left\u0022\u003E\n \u003Cspan class=\u0022tw-text-5xl tw-rotate-180\u0022\u003E\u201c\u003C\/span\u003E\n \u003Cp class=\u0022tw-font-serif tw-italic\u0022\u003EThe Universe started out like a homogenous soup of material, so how do you get clumps that weigh a billion times the mass of the sun in a very short time?\u003C\/p\u003E\n \u003Cfooter\u003E\n \u003Ccite class=\u0022tw-not-italic tw-font-normal tw-text-sm tw-text-black\u0022\u003EDr Peter Jonker, Radboud University \u003C\/cite\u003E\n \u003C\/footer\u003E\n\u003C\/blockquote\u003E\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003E\u2018When a compact star, a white dwarf, is ripped apart, it can be ripped only by intermediate mass black holes,\u2019 said Jonker. \u2018Supermassive black holes eat them whole.\u2019 There are strong indications that intermediate black holes are out there, but there\u2019s no proof yet.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003EHe is searching for flashes of intense X-ray energy to indicate the presence of an intermediate black hole. The problem is when signals are detected, the intense flashes last just a few hours. This means the data arrives too late be able to turn optical telescopes towards the source for observations.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003E\u2018This happens once in 10,000 years per galaxy, so we haven\u2019t seen one yet in our Milky Way,\u2019 said Jonker.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003EJonker also seeks to observe the expected outcome of two black holes spinning and merging, then emitting a gravitational wave that bumps nearby stars. However, to discern these stars being jolted necessitates powerful space-based telescopes.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EX-ray flashes\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003EThe \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/sci.esa.int\/web\/gaia\u0022\u003EGaia satellite\u003C\/a\u003E, launched in 2013, is providing some assistance, but a planned mission called \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/www.euclid-ec.org\/\u0022\u003EEuclid\u003C\/a\u003E will take higher resolution images and may help Jonker prove IMBHs exist. This satellite was due to be launched on a Russian rocket;\u0026nbsp;it will now be launched with a slight delay on a European Ariane 6 rocket\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003ENonetheless, a small satellite \u2013 the Chinese \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/spacenews.com\/china-to-launch-einstein-probe-in-2023-to-observe-destructive-cosmic-events\/\u0022\u003EEinstein Probe\u003C\/a\u003E - is scheduled for launch in 2023 and will look out for flashes of X-ray energy that could signify intermediate black holes. Duncan in Edinburgh says that the search for intermediate black holes ties in with his own quest. \u2018It can potentially help us solve the question of where the supermassive ones came from,\u2019 he said.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003ERight now, physicists rely on quantum theory and Einstein\u2019s equations to describe how the Universe works. These cannot be the final say, however, because they do not fit well together.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003E\u2018The theory of gravity breaks down near a black hole, and if we observe them closely enough,\u2019 said Jonker, \u2018Our expectation is that we will find deviations from the theory and important advances in understanding how physics works.\u2019\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Ch5\u003EThe research in this article was funded by the EU. 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