Black Holes

Behold! The Black Hole Collision Calculator!

A new tool called the Black Hole Collision Calculator let's users see just how powerful a collision between a black…

4 years ago

Why Can Black Hole Binaries Have Dramatically Different Masses? Multiple Generations of Mergers

Black hole mergers with very different masses tell us how small mergers can give rise to even larger ones.

4 years ago

Supermassive black holes can cloak themselves in a cocoon of dust, making them invisible even when they should be bright quasars

Quasars are the most powerful sources of light in the universe, but sometimes they're hard to find. A team of…

4 years ago

A ring of high-energy particles surrounding a black hole suddenly disappeared

In March 2018 astronomers watched a massive black hole surge in brightness. Then over the following year, its ring of…

4 years ago

A Black Hole Popping Out of a Traversable Wormhole Should Give Off a Very Specific Signal in Gravitational Waves

Gravitational wave astronomy has changed the way we view the cosmos. In only a few years we have observed the…

4 years ago

If Planet 9 is a Primordial Black Hole, We Might Be Able to See Flares When it Consumes Comets

A comet-eating black hole the size of a planet? It's possible. And if there's one out there in the distant…

4 years ago

There’s a Black Hole With 34 Billion Times the Mass of the Sun, Eating Roughly a Star Every Day

In the 1960s, astronomers began theorizing that there might be black holes in the Universe that are so massive -…

4 years ago

It might just be possible to see a light flash too when black holes merge

Black hole merger events are some of the most energetic, fearsomely energetic events in all the cosmos. When black holes…

4 years ago

How an Advanced Civilization Could Exploit a Black Hole for Nearly Limitless Energy

A black hole as a source of energy? We know black holes as powerful singularities, regions in space time where…

4 years ago

Astronomers Just Detected Either the Least Massive Black Hole, or a Strange and Massive Neutron Star

Somewhere around 2.5 solar masses is the line between black holes and neutron stars. Now we've found an object right…

4 years ago