Black Hole

Black holes — the supermassive gravitation forces at the center of most galaxies — actually spend much of their time dormant, or essentially asleep. Astronomers have now spotted one not only waking up but appearing to hit the celestial equivalent of a snooze button every few days. The black hole…

This artist’s impression illustrates the mechanism that could be at the origin of the powerful bursts of X-ray light seen from a newly awakened black hole named Ansky. Credit: ESA Get the Popular Science daily newsletter???? Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. A black hole is a terrifying…

Although we know that supermassive black holes (millions of times the mass of our Sun) lurk at the centre of most galaxies, their very nature makes them difficult to spot and study. In contrast to the popular idea of black holes constantly 'gobbling up' matter, these gravitational monsters can spend…

Supermassive black holes are challenging to observe because they can stay dormant for long periods. This was the case for the black hole in galaxy SDSS1335+0728, 300 million light-years away in Virgo. After decades of inactivity, it suddenly became active, emitting powerful X-ray bursts. The galaxy SDSS1335+0728, which had remained…

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Astronomers using the MUSE instrument at ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) have detected supermassive black hole-driven winds in the barred spiral galaxy NGC 4945. This image shows NGC 4945, a spiral galaxy over 12 million light-years away in the constellation of Centaurus; NGC 4945’s supermassive black hole-driven wind is shown…

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Black Holes May Be ‘Supermazes’ of Many-Dimensional Strings Physicists think the insides of black holes may be complex mazes of tangled strings in higher dimensions By Clara Moskowitz edited by Jeanna Bryner Jose A. Bernat Bacete/Getty Images Black holes, the densest objects in the universe, eat up anything that comes…

AI bot ChatGPT has taken over our lives with a billion daily questions, but experts now warn it's a ... More "privacy black hole" that could expose your most personal information. Adobe Stock ChatGPT has changed the way many of us work and live our day-to-day lives. According to recent…

Black holes are regions of space with gravity so strong that even light cannot escape. In general relativity, traditional black holes are surrounded by an event horizon. From an outside perspective, these black holes appear featureless—a contradiction to quantum mechanics, which suggests they must have intricate microstructure. String theory introduces…