This page is made by Tomonori Totani, on behalf of
the research group.
Abstract:
We discovered flares of the nuclei in apparently normal galaxies by a
search for transient objects using the Subaru telescope. These
galaxies are about 4 billion light years away, and flares occur just
within a few days. This radiation is likely coming from accretion disk
that is rotating with a speed close to that of light, at a distance of
about 1 billion km from supermassive black holes that are about 100 million
times heavier than the Sun. These black holes are even much heavier than
the black hole in the center of the Milky Way, which is about 3 millon
solar masses. It is for the first time that such violent activity is observed
from such heavy black holes in visible wavebands. It gives a further support
for the notion that black hole existence is ubiquitous in centers of almost
all galaxies, which is becoming a standard idea among astronomers.
