ﻻ يوجد ملخص باللغة العربية
Here are reviewed the insights from observations at optical and infrared wavelengths for low mass limits above which stars do not seem to end as luminous supernovae. These insights are: (1) the absence in archived images of nearby galaxies of stellar progenitors of core-collapse supernovae above 16-18 solar masses, (2) the identification of luminous-massive stars that quietly disappear without optically bright supernovae, (3) the absence in the nebular spectra of supernovae of type II-P of the nucleosynthetic products expected from progenitors above 20 solar masses, (4) the absence in color magnitude diagrams of stars in the environment of historic core-collapse supernovae of stars with >20 solar masses. From the results in these different areas of observational astrophysics, and the recently confirmed dependence of black hole formation on metallicity and redshift of progenitors, it is concluded that a large fraction of massive stellar binaries in the universe end as binary black holes.
If a black hole has a low spin value, it must double its mass to reach a high spin parameter. Although this is easily accomplished through mergers or accretion in the case of supermassive black holes in galactic centers, it is impossible for stellar-
A common consequence of accretion onto black holes is the formation of powerful, relativistic jets that escape the system. In the case of supermassive black holes at the centres of galaxies this has been known for decades, but for stellar-mass black
The spins of stellar-mass black holes (BHs) and the power outputs of their jets are measurable quantities. Unfortunately, the currently employed methods do not agree and the results are controversial. Two major issues concern the measurements of BH s
Despite their factor of ~10^8 difference in black hole mass, several lines of evidence suggest possible similarities between black hole accretion flows in active galactic nuclei (AGN) and Galactic X-ray binaries. However, it is still unclear whether
The groundbreaking detection of gravitational waves produced by the inspiralling and coalescence of the black hole (BH) binary GW150914 confirms the existence of heavy stellar-mass BHs with masses >25 Msun. Initial modelling of the system by Abbott e