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Supermassive Black Holes: Their Formation, and Their Prospects as Probes of Relativistic Gravity

Martin J. Rees

astro-pharXiv:astro-ph/9912346

Abstract

The existence of supermassive collapsed objects in the cores of most galaxies poses still-unanswered questions. First, how did they form, and how does their mass depend on the properties of the host galaxy? Second, can observations probe the metric in the strong-field domain, testing whether it indeed agrees with the Kerr geometry predicted by general relativity (and, if so, what the spin is)?

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