Black Holes News

September 9, 2016

Hundreds of Undiscovered Black Holes Revealed

First Gravitational Waves Form Quickly

Milky Way's Blowout Bash 6 Million Years Ago

Surprising Blazar Connection Discovered

Latest Headlines

updated 12:41am EDT

Can One Cosmic Enigma Help Solve Another?

Aug. 24, 2016 — Astrophysicists have proposed a clever new way to shed light on the mystery of dark matter, believed to make up most of the universe. The irony is they want to try to pin down the nature of this ... read more

Do Black Holes Have a Back Door?

Aug. 5, 2016 — One of the biggest problems when studying black holes is that the laws of physics as we know them cease to apply in their deepest regions. Large quantities of matter and ... read more

Mapping the Exotic Matter Inside Neutron Stars

Aug. 2, 2016 — Scientists performed the first accurate determination of the thermodynamic properties of dense quark matter under violent conditions that occur during neutron star mergers, and suggest a step towards ... read more

Chorus of Black Holes Radiates X-Rays

July 28, 2016 — The NuSTAR mission is identifying which black holes erupt with the highest-energy X-rays, report scientists. The results will ultimately help astronomers understand how the ... read more

Did the LIGO Gravitational Waves Originate from Primordial Black Holes?

July 27, 2016 — Binary black holes recently discovered by the LIGO-Virgo collaboration could be primordial entities that formed just after the Big Bang, report Japanese astrophysicists. If ... read more

Black Hole Makes Material Wobble Around It

July 12, 2016 — The European Space Agency's orbiting X-ray observatory, XMM-Newton, has proved the existence of a "gravitational vortex" around a black hole. The discovery, aided by NASA's ... read more

Astronomers Find Evidence for ‘direct Collapse’ Black Hole

July 7, 2016 — Astronomers have discovered evidence for an unusual kind of black hole born extremely early in the universe. They showed that a recently discovered unusual source of intense ... read more

Earth-Size Telescope Tracks the Aftermath of a Star Being Swallowed by a Supermassive Black Hole

July 6, 2016 — Radio astronomers have used a radio telescope network the size of the Earth to zoom in on a unique phenomenon in a distant ... read more

A New Look at the Galaxy-Shaping Power of Black Holes

July 6, 2016 — Data from a now-defunct satellite is providing new insights into the complex tug-of-war between galaxies, the hot plasma that surrounds them, and the giant black holes that ... read more

Alma Finds a Swirling, Cool Jet That Reveals a Growing, Supermassive Black Hole

July 4, 2016 — Astronomers have made the surprising discovery of a jet of cool, dense gas in the center of a galaxy located 70 million ... read more

Nearby Earth-Like Planet Discovered

Sky-High Pic Du Midi Offers Tourists Stellar Views

What Next for Gravitational Waves?

Virgin Galactic That Much Closer to Passenger Lift-Off

In the Blink of a Cosmic Eye: Chance Microlensing Events Probe Galactic Cores

June 30, 2016 — Some galaxies pump out vast amounts of energy from a very small volume of space, typically not much bigger than our own solar system. The cores of these galaxies, so called Active Galactic Nuclei or ... read more

Gravitational Lens Zooms in on Why Some Quasars Have the Radio Turned Down

June 30, 2016 — Mini-jets of material ejected from a central supermassive black hole appear to be the culprits behind faint radio wave emissions in ‘radio-quiet’ quasars. A study of gravitationally-lensed images ... read more

The Energy Spectrum of Particles Will Help Make out Black Holes

June 30, 2016 — Scientists have devised a method of distinguishing black holes from compact massive objects that are externally indistinguishable from one another. The method involves studying the energy spectrum of ... read more

Researchers Create New Method for Identifying Black Holes

June 29, 2016 — Scientists have developed a faster, more accurate way to assess gravitational wave signals and infer the astronomical sources that made them. Their method directly compares data from the LIGO ... read more

Clandestine Black Hole May Represent New Population

June 28, 2016 — Astronomers have concluded that a peculiar source of radio waves thought to be a distant galaxy is actually a nearby binary star system containing a low-mass star and a black hole. This ... read more

Seeds of Black Holes Could Be Revealed by Gravitational Waves Detected in Space

June 27, 2016 — Gravitational waves captured by space-based detectors could help identify the origins of supermassive black holes, according to new computer simulations of the ... read more

Successful First Observations of Galactic Center With GRAVITY

June 23, 2016 — A European team of astronomers have used the new GRAVITY instrument at ESO's Very Large Telescope to obtain exciting observations of the center of the Milky Way by combining light from all four ... read more

X-Ray Echoes of a Shredded Star Provide Close-Up of 'Killer' Black Hole

June 22, 2016 — Billions of years ago in the heart of a distant galaxy, a monster black hole shredded a passing star and emitted X-rays. Now astronomers are using X-ray echoes to study a newly awakened black hole ... read more

The Universe Is Crowded With Black Holes, Astronomers Predict

June 22, 2016 — Astronomers have presented one of the most complete models of matter in the universe and predict hundreds of massive black hole mergers each year observable with the second generation of ... read more

Astrophysicist Probes Theory of Black-Hole Accretion

June 22, 2016 — Utilizing the Atacama Large Millimeter Array, one of the most powerful telescopes in the world, researchers have peered into the feeding habits of a supermassive black ... read more

How Black Hole Jets Break out of Their Galaxies

June 17, 2016 — A simulation of the powerful jets generated by supermassive black holes at the centres of the largest galaxies explains why some burst forth as bright beacons visible across the universe, while ... read more

'Mosh Pits' in Star Clusters a Likely Source of LIGO's First Black Holes

June 15, 2016 — Astrophysicists have shown their theoretical predictions last year were correct: The merger of two massive black holes detected Sept. 14, 2015, could easily have formed through dynamic interactions ... read more

Did Gravitational Wave Detector Find Dark Matter?

June 15, 2016 — When an astronomical observatory detected two black holes colliding in deep space, scientists celebrated confirmation of Einstein's prediction of gravitational waves. A team of astrophysicists ... read more

Black Holes and the Prospects for Measuring Gravitational Waves

June 15, 2016 — The supermassive black holes found at the centre of every galaxy, including our own Milky Way, may, on average, be smaller than we thought, according to new work. New research suggests that the ... read more

Scientists Observe Supermassive Black Hole Feeding on Cold Gas

June 8, 2016 — For the first time, astronomers have detected billowy clouds of cold, clumpy gas streaming toward a black hole, at the center of a massive galaxy cluster. The clouds are traveling at speeds of up to ... read more

A Look Beyond the Horizon of Events

May 26, 2016 — Black holes are still very mysterious celestial bodies which, according to the majority of physicists, do not, however, escape the laws of thermodynamics. As a result, these physical systems possess ... read more

Supermassive Black Holes in 'Red Geyser' Galaxies Cause Galactic Warming

May 25, 2016 — Scientists are solving one of the biggest unsolved mysteries in galaxy evolution. Scientists have uncovered a new class of galaxies, called "red geysers," with supermassive black hole winds ... read more

Scientist Suggests Possible Link Between Primordial Black Holes and Dark Matter

May 24, 2016 — An intriguing alternative view is that dark matter is made of black holes formed during the first second of our universe's existence, known as primordial black holes. A scientist suggests that ... read more

Hubble Finds Clues to the Birth of Supermassive Black Holes

May 24, 2016 — Astrophysicists have taken a major step forward in understanding how supermassive black holes formed. Using data from Hubble and two other space telescopes, researchers have found the best evidence ... read more

Hubble Spies a Spiral Snowflake

May 13, 2016 — Together with irregular galaxies, spiral galaxies make up approximately 60 percent of the galaxies in the local universe. However, despite their prevalence, each spiral galaxy is unique -- like ... read more

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