Searching for Black Holes in Space - the key role of X-ray observations

Abstract

Although General Relativity had provided the physical basis of black holes, evidence for their existence had to await the Space Era when X-ray observations first directed the attention of astronomers to the unusual binary stars Cygnus X-1 and A0620-00. Subsequently, a number of faint Ariel 5 and Uhuru sources, mainly at high Galactic latitude, were found to lie close to bright Seyfert galaxies,suggesting the nuclear activity in AGN might also be driven by accretion in the strong gravity of a black hole. Detection of rapid X-ray variability with EXOSAT later confirmed that the accreting object in AGN was almost certainly a supermassive black hole.Comment: 15 pages, 11 figures. To be published in Space Science Reviews and as hard cover in the Space Science Series of ISSI: The Physics of Accretion onto Black Holes (Springer Publisher