Black Hole

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…

Gaia DR3 extinction corrected color-magnitude diagram (CMD) showing the location of the Gaia BH3 companion (red cross) and ED-2 members (B23) as blue and empty circles. Credit: arXiv (2024). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2404.11604 European astronomers have investigated a recently detected black hole designated Gaia BH3. In their results, they found that the…

(Left) The Milky Way's central supermassive black hole Sagittarius A*. (Right) screenshots from a 3D simulation of flares around Sgr A*. (Image credit: EHT Collaboration/Aviad Levis)) Scientists have used artificial intelligence to construct a three-dimensional model of an energetic outburst, or flare, that occurred around the Milky Way's central black…

A discovery by astronomers from the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission has revealed the most massive stellar black hole ever found in the Milky Way galaxy. The black hole, named Gaia BH3 or BH3 for short, weighs an impressive 33 times that of the Sun. The discovery was made when…

The biggest hole formed from a collapsed star in the Milky Way Galaxy resides 2,000 light years away from Earth in the Aquila constellation. Researchers spotted the black hole when they noted the wiggle of a nearby orbiting star. "No one was expecting to find a high-mass black hole lurking…