Black Holes
A Dormant Black Hole has Been Discovered Just Outside the Milky Way
What happens when a massive star dies? Conventional wisdom (and observational evidence) say that it can collapse to form a…
We Finally Know Where the Highest Energy Cosmic Rays are Coming From: Blazars
Way out there in space is a class of objects called blazars. Think of them as extreme particle accelerators, able…
A Star Came too Close to a Black Hole and was Torn Apart. Surprisingly Little Actually Went In
What happens when a star wanders too close to a supermassive black hole? The obvious story is that it gets…
One Star Flies Past the Milky Way’s Black Hole at 3% the Speed of Light
There's a population of stars in the heart of our galaxy whipping around Sagittarius A* (the Milky Way's central supermassive…
Most Black Holes Spin Rapidly. This one… Doesn’t
A Chandra X-ray Observatory view of the supermassive black hole at the heart of quasar H1821+643. Courtesy NASA/CXC/Univ. of Cambridge/J.…
Gaia Could Detect Free-Floating Black Holes Passing Near Stars in the Milky Way
The thing with black holes is they're hard to see. Typically we can only detect their presence when we can…
We Could Discover new Kinds of Particles Around Black Holes Through Gravitational Waves
A new study has shown how gravitational waves can be used to detect exotic particles orbiting black holes.
Hubble Pins Down the Mass of a Potential Free-Floating Black Hole That’s 5,000 Light-Years Away
Earlier this year, astronomers used microlensing and the Hubble Space Telescope to detect, for the first time, a rogue black…
A new Quantum Technique Could Enable Telescopes the Size of Planet Earth
A new technique that incorporates quantum techniques to interferometry could trigger another revolution in astronomy!
The Building Blocks for Supermassive Black Holes are Found in Dwarf Galaxies
We all know that a humongous black hole exists at the center of our galaxy. It's called Sagittarius A* (Sgr…