Final answer:
The search for intermediate-mass black holes is important as they are potential sources of gravitational waves, helping to fill the knowledge gap between stellar-mass and supermassive black holes and contributing to our understanding of universal gravitational dynamics.
Step-by-step explanation:
It is important to search for intermediate-mass black holes because they are potential sources of gravitational waves, which are crucial to gravitational wave astronomy. These black holes serve as a bridge in our understanding between stellar-mass black holes, often found in binary star systems, and the supermassive black holes at the centers of large galaxies. The gravitational waves emitted by mergers of black holes, including those possibly involving intermediate-mass black holes, provide insights into the properties and evolution of black holes, as well as the dynamics of crowded stellar environments like globular clusters where intermediate-mass black holes may form.
Ground-based observatories like LIGO are designed to detect mergers of black holes with masses up to about 100 times the mass of the Sun. For detecting the merger of supermassive black holes, which may emit longer gravitational waves, it is necessary to build space-based observatories. Exploring intermediate-mass black holes potentially fills the gap in gravitational wave detection capabilities between ground-based and future space observatories.