Black Hole

An artist's impression of the events leading up to supernova SN 2023zkd, which likely occurred when a star attempted to swallow a nearby black hole. Here, the star's shape is stretched by the black hole's massive gravitational forces. (Image credit: Melissa Weiss/CfA) Scientists may have spotted a never-before-seen kind of…

A view of The Cosmic Horseshoe and its gravitational lens, in which an ultramassive black hole appears to be lurking. (Image credit: NASA/ESA) The massive " Cosmic Horseshoe " galaxy system likely hosts a colossal black hole measuring 36 billion times the mass of our sun — one of the…

Artificial intelligence has helped astronomers observe what may be the first known case of a star exploding while interacting with a black hole, a new study reports. (Image credit: Melissa Weiss/CfA) Astronomers have observed what may be the first known case of a massive star exploding while interacting with a…

An artist representation of the CAPERS-LRD-z9 galaxy (Image source: Erik Zumalt and The University of Texas at Austin) A team of astronomers has discovered a black hole that possibly dates back as early as 13.3 billion years ago — only 500 million years after the Big Bang. This discovery could…

In a new paper published in the journal iScience, an astrophysicist from Fudan University discusses the possibility of sending a nanocraft to a black hole at 20-25 light-years from Earth to test the nature of the compact object and fundamental physics in strong gravitational fields. Black holes are the sources…

Scientists believe the Milky Way could be home to as many as 100 million stellar-mass black holes, but much about these giant celestial phenomena remains a mystery. Now, an astronomer believes it may one day be possible to send a tiny spacecraft no heavier than a dime to the edges…

Imagine every massive galaxy as a grand cosmic city, and at its heart, lurking in the shadows, is a gravitational monarch: a supermassive black hole (SMBH). These invisible titans don’t just sit idly; they co-evolve with their galaxies, shaping their growth like silent architects over billions of years. In elliptical…

Since its launch in late 2021, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has been glimpsing some of the earliest epochs of cosmic time. Its observations have stretched cosmologists' timelines of when galaxies may have first started to form. And now some of the telescope’s farthest observations yet have revealed sources…

Physicists with the LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA collaboration have detected the gravitational wave signal (dubbed GW231123) of the most massive merger between two black holes yet observed, resulting in a new black hole that is 225 times more massive than our Sun. The results were presented at the Edoardo Amaldi Conference on Gravitational…

Space A puzzling gravitational wave was detected, and astronomers have determined that it comes from a record-breaking black hole merger By Karmela Padavic-Callaghan Facebook / Meta Twitter / X icon Linkedin Reddit Email Illustration of merging of black holes Shutterstock / Jurik Peter A record-breaking black hole smash-up just expanded…