The Origin of Supermassive Black Holes

Dr. Amy Reines
Department of Physics
Montana State University

The origin of supermassive black holes remains a major outstanding issue in modern astrophysics.  These monster black holes reside in the nuclei of essentially every massive galaxy and power the most luminous quasars at the edge of the observable Universe.  However, directly observing the first “seed” black holes in the early Universe - that can eventually grow to upwards of a billion solar masses - is not feasible with current telescopes.  Present-day dwarf galaxies, on the other hand, are within observational reach and offer another avenue to learn about black hole seeds since low-mass galaxies can host relatively pristine black holes.  In this talk, I will highlight some of my achievements in this field that have taken us from a few rare examples to large systematically assembled samples of dwarf galaxies hosting black holes, including a new sample of “wandering” black holes in the outskirts of dwarf galaxies.