Largest-ever discovery of 'missing link' black holes revealed by dark energy camera (video)

[Admin]

Using a revolutionary dark energy camera, astronomers have discovered the largest haul of "missing link" intermediate-mass black holes ever seen, but there should have been more.

Largest-ever discovery of 'missing link' black holes revealed by dark energy camera (video) : Read more

 

[Torbjorn Larsson]

The main takeaway IMHO is that they extend observed AGNs downwards in mass and that their data then indicate that Pop III seeds could fit the growth trend.

I don’t grok the press release claim, repeated here: “However, only 70 of the newly discovered IMBH candidates overlap with dwarf AGN candidates.” They do many data cuts but all of them are based on spectral AGN samples (while other surveys observe tentative dynamical candidates). The paper does not present such a quantified claim, though it discuss one qualitative trend that may be related to what it is supposed to mean: “The majority of the tentative candidates lie below the empirical fit, suggesting that these sources host under-massive BHs assuming that their broad lines from BLR kinematics. This could be due to the low efficiency of BH growth in galaxies (Section 5.3).”