Black Holes News

November 20, 2024

Top Headlines

Nov. 13, 2024 — Scientists using observations from NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory have discovered, for the first time, the signal from a pair of monster black holes disrupting a cloud of gas in the center of a ...

Astrophysicists Use Echoes of Light to Illuminate Black Holes

Nov. 7, 2024 — Researchers have developed an innovative technique to search for black hole light echoes. Their novel method, which will make it easier for the mass and the spin of black holes to be measured, represents a major step forward, since it operates ...

Dance of Electrons Measured in the Glow from Exploding Neutron-Stars

Nov. 4, 2024 — The temperature of elementary particles has been observed in the radioactive glow following the collision of two neutron stars and the birth of a black hole. This has, for the first time, made it possible to measure the microscopic, physical ...

Astronomers Discover the Fastest-Feeding Black Hole in the Early Universe

Nov. 4, 2024 — Astronomers have discovered a supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy just 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang that is consuming matter at a phenomenal rate -- over 40 times the theoretical limit. While short lived, this black hole's ...

Latest Headlines

updated 11:04pm EST

Evidence Mounts for Dark Energy from Black Holes

Oct. 28, 2024 — Researchers have strengthened the case that matter becomes dark energy when massive stars collapse and become black ...

Seeing a Black Hole's Jet in a New Light

Oct. 28, 2024 — Researchers have pored over more than two decades' worth of data from NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory to show there's new knotty science to discover around black ...

Physicists Discover First 'Black Hole Triple'

Oct. 23, 2024 — A surprising discovery about the black hole V404 Cygnus is expanding our understanding of black holes, the objects they can host, and the way they ...

Astronomers Detect Ancient Lonely Quasars With Murky Origins

Oct. 17, 2024 — Astronomers observed ancient quasars that appear to be surprisingly alone in the early universe. The findings challenge physicists' understanding of how such luminous objects could have formed so ...

Influence of a Black Hole's Spin: First Evidence of Precession in Ultraluminous Accretion Disks

Oct. 7, 2024 — Researchers conducted innovative simulations of spinning black holes grounded in general relativity, which clarified that the ultraluminous accretion ...

First Data from XRISM Space Mission Provides New Perspective on Supermassive Black Holes

Sep. 30, 2024 — Data from an international space mission is confirming decades worth of speculation about the galactic neighborhoods of supermassive black ...

NASA's Hubble Finds That a Black Hole Beam Promotes Stellar Eruptions

Sep. 26, 2024 — In a surprise finding, astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have discovered that the blowtorch-like jet from a supermassive black hole at the core of a huge galaxy seems to cause stars to ...

Black Hole Pairs May Unveil New Particles

Sep. 17, 2024 — In a new paper, physicists argue that close observations of merging black hole pairs may unveil information about potential new ...

A Wobble from Mars Could Be Sign of Dark Matter

Sep. 17, 2024 — Watching for changes in Mars' orbit over time could be new way to detect passing dark matter, according to ...

More Black Holes Than Expected in the Early Universe

Sep. 17, 2024 — With the help of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, an international team of scientists has found more black holes in the early universe than has previously been reported. The new result can help ...

Astronomers Detect Black Hole 'Starving' Its Host Galaxy to Death

Sep. 16, 2024 — Astronomers have used the NASA/ESA James Webb Space Telescope to confirm that supermassive black holes can starve their host galaxies of the fuel they need to form new ...

Massive Merger: Study Reveals Evidence for Origin of Supermassive Black Hole at Galaxy's Center

Sep. 6, 2024 — Researchers have discovered compelling evidence suggesting that the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy, known as Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), is likely the result of a past ...

Dancing Galaxies Make a Monster at the Cosmic Dawn

Aug. 29, 2024 — Astronomers have spotted a pair of galaxies in the act of merging 12.8 billion years ago. The characteristics of these galaxies indicate that the merger will form a monster galaxy, one of the ...

Supercomputer Simulations Reveal the Nature of Turbulence in Black Hole Accretion Disks

Aug. 29, 2024 — To understand the mysteries surrounding black holes, researchers at Tohoku University have created a simulation of accretion disk turbulence that possesses the highest-resolution currently ...

Dark Matter Could Have Helped Make Supermassive Black Holes in the Early Universe

Aug. 28, 2024 — Supermassive black holes typically take billions of years to form. But the James Webb Space Telescope is finding them not that long after the Big Bang -- before they should have had time to form. ...

Highest-Resolution Observations Yet from the Surface of Earth

Aug. 27, 2024 — Astronomers have achieved the highest resolution ever obtained from the surface of Earth. They managed this feat by detecting light from distant galaxies at a frequency of around 345 GHz, equivalent ...

Explanation Found for X-Ray Radiation from Black Holes

Aug. 20, 2024 — Researchers have succeeded in something that has been pursued since the 1970s: explaining the X-ray radiation from the black hole surroundings. The radiation originates from the combined effect of ...

Right on Schedule: Physicists Use Modeling to Forecast a Black Hole's Feeding Patterns With Precision

Aug. 16, 2024 — The dramatic dimming of a light source ~ 870 million light years away from Earth confirms the accuracy of a detailed ...

What No One Has Seen Before -- Simulation of Gravitational Waves from Failing Warp Drive

July 30, 2024 — Physicists have been exploring the theoretical possibility of spaceships driven by compressing the four-dimensional spacetime for decades. Although this so-called 'warp drive' originates ...

NASA's Fermi Finds New Feature in Brightest Gamma-Ray Burst Yet Seen

July 25, 2024 — In October 2022, astronomers were stunned by what was quickly dubbed the BOAT -- the brightest-of-all-time gamma-ray burst (GRB). Now an international science team reports that data from NASA's ...

Astrophysicists Uncover Supermassive Blackhole/dark Matter Connection in Solving the 'Final Parsec Problem'

July 22, 2024 — Researchers have found a link between some of the largest and smallest objects in the cosmos: supermassive black holes and dark matter particles. Their new calculations reveal that pairs of ...

Another Intermediate-Mass Black Hole Discovered at the Center of Our Galaxy

July 18, 2024 — So far, only about ten intermediate-mass black holes have been discovered in the entire universe. The newly identified black hole causes surrounding stars in a cluster to move in an unexpectedly ...

Sun-Like Stars Found Orbiting Hidden Companions

July 16, 2024 — Astronomers have uncovered what appear to be 21 neutron stars in orbit around stars like our Sun. The discovery is surprising because it is not clear how a star that exploded winds up next to a star ...

Bizarre 'Garden Sprinkler-Like' Jet Is Spotted Shooting out of Neutron Star

July 16, 2024 — A strange 'garden sprinkler-like' jet coming from a neutron star has been pictured for the first time. The S-shaped structure is created as the jet changes direction due to the wobbling of ...

How the 'Heart and Lungs' of a Galaxy Extend Its Life

July 12, 2024 — Galaxies avoid an early death because they have a 'heart and lungs' which effectively regulate their 'breathing' and prevent them growing out of control, a new study suggests. If ...

Strong Evidence for Intermediate-Mass Black Hole in Omega Centauri

July 10, 2024 — Most known black holes are either extremely massive, like the supermassive black holes that lie at the cores of large galaxies, or relatively lightweight, with a mass of under 100 times that of the ...

Tiny Bright Objects Discovered at Dawn of Universe Baffle Scientists

June 28, 2024 — A recent discovery by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) confirmed that luminous, very red objects previously detected in the early universe upend conventional thinking about the origins ...

A Hidden Treasure in the Milky Way -- Astronomers Uncover Ultrabright X-Ray Source

June 24, 2024 — Astronomers uncovered that a well-known X-ray binary, whose exact nature has been a mystery to scientists until now, is actually a hidden ultraluminous X-ray ...

Supermassive Black Hole Appears to Grow Like a Baby Star

June 20, 2024 — Supermassive black holes pose unanswered questions for astronomers around the world, not least 'How do they grow so big?' Now, an international team of astronomers has discovered a powerful ...

Astronomers See a Massive Black Hole Awaken in Real Time

June 18, 2024 — In late 2019 the previously unremarkable galaxy SDSS1335+0728 suddenly started shining brighter than ever before. To understand why, astronomers have used data from several space and ground-based ...