Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective astronomy Extremely massive

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

hyper- +‎ massive

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Examples

  • We will use STIS spectra to derive the masses of 5 hypermassive black holes (HMBHs).

    SpaceRef Top Stories 2010

  • Right now, the theoretical inclination is that we can in fact make hypermassive stars, given a normal spread of stellar masses in a high enough a density star forming cluster, as

    ScienceBlogs Channel : Life Science 2009

  • Do stars collide more and more frequently, until a hypermassive star forms

    ScienceBlogs Channel : Life Science 2009

  • There are two basic issues: one is whether the stars can hold together long enough to actually grow in mass, this is probably a composition dependent issue - high metallicity stars ought to have stronger winds, low metallicity stars would have a harder time shedding mass; secondly, do high mass stellar clusters actually form compact enough for the collision rate ever to be high enough - it seems clear, theoretically, that if clusters are massive enough and dense enough, then the high mass stellar collision rate will diverge and many of the more massive stars will pile in and form one (or few) hypermassive stars.

    ScienceBlogs Channel : Life Science 2009

  • Having hypermassive stars, even a few, is very fun, because they can make nice things like intermediate mass black holes (black holes with masses ~ >

    ScienceBlogs Channel : Life Science 2009

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