Black Hole

An illustration of a spacecraft detecting ripples in space-time known as gravitational waves as they spew out of a massive black hole. (Image credit: ESA) Nothing is supposed to escape a black hole's event horizon — yet new research suggests it may secretly leak information. That leakage would appear in…

Messier 77 is a well-known, relatively nearby, bright spiral galaxy with a supermassive black hole at its center. An artist’s concept of Messier 77, featuring its powerful black hole and accretion disk, and never before seen polarization in water masers outside of our Milky Way Galaxy. Image credit: NSF /…

Could a decades-long debate about the mysterious movements of stars in Omega Centauri, the largest star cluster in the Milky Way, finally be resolved? Omega Centauri is a massive star cluster with nearly ten million stars located in the constellation Centaurus. For a long time, researchers have noticed that the…

Recent findings by the EHT collaboration reveal strong, organized magnetic fields around Sagittarius A*, suggesting common traits among black holes. Detailed comparisons with M87’s black hole show similarities, hinting at universal black hole characteristics. Future enhancements in observation technology promise deeper insights and more detailed imaging of black holes...Read More

An illustration of an ultramassive black hole surrounded by gas abnd dust that it feeds on to help it grow (Image credit: Robert Lea (created with Canva)/NASA) Scientists believe that at the heart of all large galaxies lurk supermassive black holes, cosmic titans with masses equivalent to that of millions…

NASA’s IXPE (Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer) has helped astronomers better understand the shapes of structures essential to a black hole – specifically, the disk of material swirling around it, and the shifting plasma region called the corona. The stellar-mass black hole, part of the binary system Swift J1727.8-1613, was discovered…

Theoretical study suggests that small black holes born in the early universe may have left behind hollow planetoids and microscopic tunnels, and that we should start searching rocks and old buildings for them. New theoretical research explores innovative methods to detect primordial black holes, suggesting that signatures of these elusive…

Every galaxy has a supermassive black hole at its center, much like every egg has a yolk. But sometimes, hens lay eggs with two yolks. In a similar way, astrophysicists like us who study supermassive black holes expect to find binary systems – two supermassive black holes orbiting each other…

An artist's impression of the spiraling magnetic wind around the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy ESO320-G030. The colored lines show the rotational motion of the wind (blue towards us, red is away from us). (Image credit: M.D. Gorski/Aaron Geller/Northwestern University/CIERA.) It's a bit of a myth…

An illustration of the long-dormant black hole "waking up" as a glut of gas and dust pours into its maw. (Image credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser) For the first time ever, astronomers have witnessed the black hole at the center of a galaxy roaring to life in real time — and they're…