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After 50 years of observational studies of black holes, great progress has been achieved in this branch of astrophysics. Several dozen stellar-mass black holes have been discovered in X-ray binaries, and several hundred supermassive black holes in galactic nuclei. The remarkable recent discovery of gravitational waves from merging black holes in a binary system by LIGO marks the beginning of a new stage in black-hole research. It is quite possible that gravitational-wave studies will provide definitive evidence for the existence of event horizons in black holes in the near future. On the other hand, the development of methods for space and ground-based radio-interferometry observations provides hope that it will be possible to obtain images of 'shadows' of supermassive black holes in galactic nuclei, and to observe directly processes occurring in the vicinities of the event horizons of supermassive black holes. This is important for tests of general relativity in extremely strong gravitational fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider the relationship between the masses of the compact nuclear objects in the centers of disky galaxies – supermassive black holes (SMBHs) or nuclear star clusters (NCs) – and such parameters as the maximal velocity of rotation Vmax, obtained from the rotation curves, indicative dynamical mass M25, and the color index (B−V) of their parent galaxies. It was found that the mass of nuclear clusters Mnc correlates more closely with the velocity of rotation and total mass of galaxies than the mass of supermassive black holes Mbh. The dependence of masses of the central objects on the color index is bimodal: galaxies of the red group (red-sequence), which have (B−V) > 0.6−0.7, differ from bluer galaxies, by higher values of Mbh for similar host-galaxy parameters. In contrast, in the diagrams for nuclear clusters the “blue” and “red” galaxies form unified sequences. It agrees with scenarios in which most red-group galaxies form as a result of loss of interstellar gas in a stage of high nuclear activity in galaxies whose central black-hole masses are high, exceeding 106 − 107M⊙ (depending on the total mass of the galaxy). The active growth of nuclear star clusters possibly begun after the violent AGN activity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Observational work conducted over the past few decades indicates that all massive galaxies have supermassive black holes at their centres. Although the luminosities and brightness fluctuations of quasars in the early Universe suggest that some were powered by black holes with masses greater than 10 billion solar masses, the remnants of these objects have not been found in the nearby Universe. The giant elliptical galaxy Messier 87 hosts the hitherto most massive known black hole, which has a mass of 6.3 billion solar masses. Here we report that NGC 3842, the brightest galaxy in a cluster at a distance from Earth of 98 megaparsecs, has a central black hole with a mass of 9.7 billion solar masses, and that a black hole of comparable or greater mass is present in NGC 4889, the brightest galaxy in the Coma cluster (at a distance of 103 megaparsecs). These two black holes are significantly more massive than predicted by linearly extrapolating the widely used correlations between black-hole mass and the stellar velocity dispersion or bulge luminosity of the host galaxy. Although these correlations remain useful for predicting black-hole masses in less massive elliptical galaxies, our measurements suggest that different evolutionary processes influence the growth of the largest galaxies and their black holes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]