How do we know there's a black hole in every galaxy centre? | History of Supermassive Black Holes

At the centre of every galaxy, there is a supermassive black hole (a million to a billion times bigger than the Sun). But how do we even know that? There are so many scientific results that have jigsaw-pieced together throughout the past century that allow us to know that now, so join me, as I go through decade by decade and explain the significance of all the results that have built up the big picture.

00:00 - Introduction
00:53 - 1900s
03:58 - 1910s
05:50 - 1920s
06:58 -1930s
09:04 - 1940s
11:00 -1950s
12:09 -1960s
17:14 - 1970s
18:38 - 1980s
19:40 - 1990s
22:12 - 2000s
23:28 - 2010s

Here are links to all the papers I mentioned throughout the video, again listed by decade (note that "et al." is Latin for "and others"):

Michell (1784) - https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstl.1784.0008

Fath (1909) - http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/pdf/1909LicOB...5...71F
Einstein (1915) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientific_publications_by_Albert_Einstein#/media/File:GeneralRelativityTheoryManuscript.jpg
Schwarzschild (1916) - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:K._Schwarzschild_-_%C3%9Cber_das_Gravitationsfeld_eines_Massenpunktes_nach_der_Einsteinschen_Theorie_(1916).pdf

Lemaître (1927) - http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/pdf/1927ASSB...47...49L
Hubble (1929) - https://www.pnas.org/content/15/3/168

Einstein (1931; cosmological constant introduced) - http://echo.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/ECHOdocuView?url=/permanent/echo/einstein/sitzungsberichte/R583HGCS/index.meta&pn=1
Chandrasekhar (1931) - http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/pdf/1931ApJ....74...81C
Tolman (1939) - https://journals.aps.org/pr/abstract/10.1103/PhysRev.55.364
Oppenheimer & Volkoff (1939) https://journals.aps.org/pr/abstract/10.1103/PhysRev.55.374

Seyfert (1943) - http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/pdf/1943ApJ....97...28S
Bolton, Stanley & Slee (1949) - https://www.nature.com/articles/164101b0

Baade & Minkowski (1954) - http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/pdf/1954ApJ...119..206B
Burbidge (1959) - http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/pdf/1959ApJ...129..849B

Minkowski (1960) - http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/pdf/1960ApJ...132..908M
Giacconi (1962) - https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.9.439
Hoyle & Fowler (1963) - http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/pdf/1963MNRAS.125..169H
Schmidt (1963) - https://www.nature.com/articles/1971040a0
Kerr (1963) - https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.11.237
Salpeter (1964) - http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/pdf/1964ApJ...140..796S
Zel’dovich (1964) - https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=19640015209
Schmidt & Matthews (1964) - http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/pdf/1964ApJ...139..781S
Schmidt (1965) - http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/pdf/1965ApJ...141....1S
Penrose (1965) - https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.14.57
Hawking (1967) - https://www.jstor.org/stable/2415769?origin=ads&seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents
Hewish, Bell et al. (1968) - https://www.nature.com/articles/217709a0
Lynden-Bell (1969) - https://www.nature.com/articles/223690a0

Lyden Bell & Rees (71) - http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/pdf/1971MNRAS.152..461L
Wolfe & Burbidge (1974) - http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/pdf/1970ApJ...161..419W
Bardeen, Carter & Hawking (1973) - https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF01645742
Bekenstein (1973) - https://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevD.7.2333
Balick & Brown (1974) - http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/pdf/1974ApJ...194..265B
Sargent et al. (1978) - http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/pdf/1978ApJ...221..731S

Dressler (84) - http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/pdf/1984ApJ...286...97D
Kormendy (88) - http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/pdf/1988ApJ...335...40K

Harms et al. (1994) - http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/pdf/1994ApJ...435L..35H
Miyoshi et al. (1995) - https://www.nature.com/articles/373127a0
Urry & Padovani (1995) - https://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/9506063.pdf
Faber et al. (1997) - http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/pdf/1997AJ....114.1771F
Magorrian et al. (1998) - https://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/9708072.pdf

Ferrarse & Merritt (2000) - https://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0006053.pdf
Gebhardt et al. (2000) - https://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0006289.pdf

Hopkins et al. (2006) - https://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0506398.pdf
Simmons, Smethurst & Lintott (2017) - https://arxiv.org/pdf/1705.10793.pdf
Martin et al. (2018) - https://arxiv.org/pdf/1801.09699.pdf

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👩🏽‍💻 Dr Becky Smethurst is an astrophysicist researching galaxies and supermassive black holes at Christ Church at the University of Oxford.
http://drbecky.uk.com
https://rebeccasmethurst.co.uk

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