Black Hole

An illustration of a tidal disruption event. Robin Dienel/Carnegie Institution for Science It's among the most violent events in the universe, and astronomers have witnessed its aftermath in historic new detail with the help of one of NASA's newest space te…

Maria Farrell admits that comparing smartphones to abusive men (they try to keep you from friends and family, they make it hard to study or go to work, they constantly follow you and check up on you) might seem to trivialize domestic partner violence, but, as…

NASA has released a stunning new high-resolution visualization of a black hole, specifically how its gravity distorts the way it looks. NASA describes this warping effect as similar to what one would see when looking in a carnival mirror, skewing light, twist…

NASA knows a thing or two about black holes. Video screenshot by Amanda Kooser/CNET I learned a lot by watching NASA's Guide to Black Hole Safety, an animated video the Goddard Space Flight Center released on Monday.  I learned a black hole is not a porta…

A rare peek into the black hole where some of academia’s best and brightest disappear to make a dent in the universe. What is Apple University? And how did it persuade a distinguished intellectual like Professor Cohen (Yale, Harvard, MIT, Stanford) to join i…

Farhad Yusef-Zadeh was observing the center of the Milky Way galaxy in radio waves, looking for the presence of faint stars, when he saw it: a spindly structure giving off its own radio emissions. The filament-like feature was probably a glitch in the telesco…

NASAs Juno spacecraft recently caught this ominous view of Jupiter, which shows a massive black spot atop the gas giants churning clouds. Looks scary, but theres a perfectly reasonable explanation: Its a shadow cast by Jupiters extremely volcanic moon, Io. J…

Astronomers have spotted “dramatic” black holes in six galaxies, which could shed new light on galactic evolution. “We found a whole new class of active galactic nucleus capable of transforming a wimpy galaxy to a luminous quasar,” said Suvi Gezari, an assoc…

Astronomers using the GBT have discovered the most massive neutron star to date, a rapidly spinning pulsar approximately 4,600 light-years from Earth. This record-breaking object is teetering on the edge of existence, approaching the theoretical maximum mass …

Making a monumental scientific breakthrough is really kind of its own reward. Even so, it’s always nice to get extra recognition in the form of unexpected money. For the 347 scientists around the world who made history when they captured the first image of a …