Bridging the gap between the approximately ten solar mass ‘stellar mass’ black holes and the‘supermassive’ black holes of millions to billions of solar masses are the elusive ‘intermediatemass’ black holes. Their discovery is key to understanding whether supermassive black holescan grow from stellar-mass black holes or whether a more exotic process accelerated theirgrowth soon after the Big Bang. Currently, tentative evidence suggests that the progenitors ofsupermassive black holes were formed as B10~4–10~5M black holes via the direct collapse ofgas. Ongoing searches for intermediate-mass black holes at galaxy centres will help shed lighton this formation mechanism.
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