Black Hole

The dozens of black hole collisions observed by the LIGO and Virgo gravitational wave detectors are changing our view of the universe. Sakkmesterke/Science Source When the first black hole collision was detected in 2015, it was a watershed moment in the history of astronomy. With gravitational waves, astronomers were observing…

Identical twins have nothing on black holes. Twins may grow from the same genetic blueprints, but they can differ in a thousand ways—from temperament to hairstyle. Black holes, according to Albert Einstein’s theory of gravity, can have just three characteristics—mass, spin and charge. If those values are the same for…

Larger black holes may be the usual attention-getters, but the smaller ones may be at least as important. A team using the Hubble Space Telescope has discovered a concentration of small black holes in the NGC 6397 globular star cluster (pictured above) 7,800 light-years away — the first to have…

Home News Science & Astronomy The globular cluster NGC 6397, as imaged by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. (Image credit: NASA, ESA, T. Brown, S. Casertano, and J. Anderson (STScI)) A tight knot of stars nearly as old as the universe hides a dark secret at its core. The globular cluster…

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Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have found evidence for dozens of stellar-mass black holes lurking in the core-collapsed, globular cluster NGC 6397, one of the closest globular clusters to Earth. An artist’s impression of a group of stellar-mass black holes in the center of NGC 6397. Image credit:…

Globular clusters are extremely dense stellar systems, in which stars are packed closely together. They are also typically very old -- the globular cluster that is the focus of this study, NGC 6397, is almost as old as the Universe itself. It resides 7800 light-years away, making it one of…

According to Einstein’s general theory of relativity, black holes have only three observable properties: mass, spin and charge. Additional properties, or “hair,” do not exist. Andriy_A / Shutterstock Identical twins have nothing on black holes. Twins may grow from the same genetic blueprints, but they can differ in a thousand…

On Christmas Eve, Steven Brandenburg, a Milwaukee-area pharmacist, attempted to destroy more than 500 doses of coronavirus vaccine, because, he admitted, he feared the Moderna drug would “alter the recipient’s DNA.” Described in law-enforcement documents as a “conspiracy theorist,” Brandenburg, 46, had reportedly warned his wife that “the world is…

Home News The European Southern Observatory’s GRAVITY instrument revealed clumps of gas swirling around just outside the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy. Here, a visualization of that orbiting gas. (Image: © ESO/Gravity Consortium/L. Calçada) The supermassive black hole hiding in the center of our galaxy is…