Black Holes News

November 7, 2016

Gravitational Lens Makes Distant Galaxy Visible

'Nearly Naked' Supermassive Black Hole

Unexplainable Activity in Distant Stars

'Explosive' Growth of Supermassive Black Holes

Latest Headlines

updated 5:11pm EST

Did LIGO Detect Black Holes or Gravastars?

Oct. 19, 2016 — After the first direct detection of gravitational waves that was announced last February by the LIGO Scientific Collaboration and made news all over the world, two researchers set out to test whether ... read more

NASA's Fermi Finds Record-Breaking Binary in Galaxy Next Door

Sep. 29, 2016 — Scientists have found the first gamma-ray binary in another galaxy and the most luminous one ever seen. The dual-star system, dubbed LMC P3, contains a massive star and a ... read more

How to Merge Two Black Holes in a Simple Way

Sep. 26, 2016 — The merger of two black holes, such as the one that produced the gravitational waves discovered by the LIGO Observatory, is considered an extremely complex process that can ... read more

Twin Jets Pinpoint the Heart of an Active Galaxy

Sep. 21, 2016 — Two particle jets shoot out from the heart of active galaxy NGC 1052 at the speed of light, apparently originating in the vicinity of a massive black hole. Researchers have ... read more

In Exploring the ‘now,’ New Theory Links Flow of Time With Big Bang

Sep. 21, 2016 — A simple question from his wife -- Does physics really allow people to travel back in time? -- propelled a physicist on a quest to resolve a fundamental problem that had puzzled him throughout his ... read more

New Ways to Track Stars Eaten by Black Holes

Sep. 19, 2016 — Astrophysicists have broken new ground in ways to observe a star swallowed by a black hole, promising to help paint a clearer picture of this ... read more

Echoes of Black Holes Eating Stars Discovered

Sep. 15, 2016 — A black hole destroying a star, an event astronomers call 'stellar tidal disruption,' releases an enormous amount of energy, brightening the surroundings in an event called a ... read more

Black Hole Hidden Within Its Own Exhaust

Sep. 15, 2016 — New data from ALMA reveal that the black hole at the center of a galaxy named NGC 1068 is actually the source of its own dusty torus of dust and gas, forged from material ... read more

Starving Black Hole Returns Brilliant Galaxy to the Shadows

Sep. 15, 2016 — Many galaxies are found to have an extremely bright core powered by a supermassive black hole. These cores make "active galaxies" some of the brightest objects in the ... read more

Ripples in Fabric of Space-Time? Hundreds of Undiscovered Black Holes

Sep. 7, 2016 — Computer simulations of a spherical collection of stars known as 'NGC 6101' reveal that it contains hundreds of black holes, until now thought impossible. Recent observations ... read more

Multi-Star Systems Form When Gravity Gets Weird

X-Ray Satellite Uncovering the Secrets of Black Holes

Nearby Earth-Like Planet Discovered

Sky-High Pic Du Midi Offers Tourists Stellar Views

First Gravitational Waves Form After 10 Million Years

Sep. 5, 2016 — If two galaxies collide, the merging of their central black holes triggers gravitational waves, which ripple throughout space. An international research team has now calculated that this occurs ... read more

Milky Way Had a Blowout Bash 6 Million Years Ago

Aug. 29, 2016 — The center of the Milky Way galaxy is currently a quiet place where a supermassive black hole slumbers, only occasionally slurping small sips of hydrogen gas. But it wasn't always this way. A ... read more

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

NASA's WISE, Fermi Missions Reveal a Surprising Blazar Connection

Aug. 24, 2016 — Astronomers using observations from NASA's WISE and Fermi missions have confirmed a connection between the infrared and gamma-ray light emitted by blazars, a class of distant galaxies powered by ... 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 energy concentrate in an ... 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 growth patterns of ... 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 further data support this ... 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 radiation is likely ... 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 lurk in their centers. The ... 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 galaxy: a jet activated by a star being consumed by a supermassive black ... 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 light years from Earth. The jet, with its unusual, swirling structure, gives ... read more

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

Monday, September 5, 2016