Black Hole

In 1974, Stephen Hawking made the seminal discovery that black holes emit thermal radiation. Previous to that, black holes were believed to be inert. In new research, a duo of researchers from the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Sussex shows that black holes are in fact…

Space 9 September 2021 By Leah Crane An artist’s impression of a black hole Shutterstock / Vadim Sadovski Black holes may have their own exotic version of pressure that is different from the sort found everywhere else in the universe. Calculations of how quantum mechanics affects gravity at the edge…

Astronomers have observed the signs of a star swallowing a compact object that they believe is a black hole, and that object then devouring the star's core from the inside. The process resulted in an explosion that left the star obliterated and the black hole standing alone. The gruesome cosmic…

Space 2 September 2021 By Leah Crane Supernovae are violent explosions MEHAU KULYK/SPL/Alamy Astronomers have found a new type of supernova in a galaxy about 500 million light years away from Earth. This enormous explosion, called a merger-triggered core collapse supernova, was expected to occur in some systems where two…

Fast-moving debris from a supernova explosion triggered by a stellar collision crashes into material thrown out earlier, and the shocks cause bright radio emission seen by the VLA. Credit: Bill Saxton, NRAO/AUI/NSF Astronomers have found dramatic evidence that a black hole or neutron star spiraled its way into the core…

Using data collected by the Very Large Array Sky Survey (VLASS), astronomers have found evidence that a compact object — a black hole or neutron star — spiraled its way into the core of a companion star in the VT 1210+4956 system and caused it to explode as a supernova.…

By combining gravitational lensing with the capabilities of NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, astronomers have detected two X-ray-emitting objects — two growing supermassive black holes or one such black hole and a jet — in an active galaxy called MG B2016+112. The X-rays detected by Chandra were emitted by MG B2016+112 when…

Our human world is soaked in light. For starters there are the 100,000 trillion photons arriving every second at every square centimeter of Earth’s dayside surface, after racing here from the outer envelope of a natural giant thermonuclear reactor we call the sun. There are also the photons that zip…

Astronomers have used gravitational lensing to obtain an unprecedented look at a black hole system in the early Universe. An artist’s illustration shows how the X-ray light from one of the objects on the left (purple) has been warped by the gravity of an intervening galaxy to produce two sources…

Home News There's no consensus yet on how supermassive black holes form, but a mesmerizing new simulation is taking a crack at that question like never before.  Scientists are hoping that new simulations, like the one recently created by researchers at Northwestern University, can reveal the origins of these gargantuan…