Black Holes
A Star Came too Close to a Black Hole. It Didn’t End Well
Black holes are confounding objects that stretch physics to its limits. The most massive ones lurk in the centers of…
Black Holes Shouldn’t be Able to Merge, but Dozens of Mergers Have Been Detected. How Do They Do It?
Who knows what lurks in the hearts of some globular clusters? Astronomers using a collection of gravitational wave observatories found…
A Black Hole has been Burping for 100 Million Years
Black holes are gluttonous behemoths that lurk in the center of galaxies. Almost everybody knows that nothing can escape them,…
A Black Hole Consumed a Star and Released the Light of a Trillion Suns
When a flash of light appears somewhere in the sky, astronomers notice. When it appears in a region of the…
The Second-Closest Supermassive Black Hole Might be in a Nearby Dwarf Galaxy
There's a little galaxy in the Milky Way's cosmic neighborhood called Leo 1. It's a dwarf spheroidal that lies less…
When Black Holes Collide They Also Produce Neutrinos
Ever since astronomers first detected ultra high energy neutrinos coming from random directions in space, they have not been able…
A Black Hole’s X-Rays are Coming From a Region 2,000 km Away From the Singularity Itself
A study of Cygnus X-1 shows its jets emanate from a region a bit off from the black hole itself.
Did Supermassive Black Holes Collapse Directly out of Giant Clouds of gas? It Could Depend on Magnetic Fields
New research shows how the seeds of Supermassive Black Holes (SMBHs) could have formed from gas clouds with amplified magnetic…
A Black Hole is Hurling a jet of Material at its Neighboring Galaxy
It's been a banner time for black hole research! In recent months, astrophysicists have announced the discovery of the most…