Black Holes News

December 21, 2024

Top Headlines

Massive Black Hole in the Early Universe Spotted Taking a 'Nap' After Overeating

Dec. 18, 2024 — Scientists have spotted a massive black hole in the early universe that is 'napping' after stuffing itself with too much food. Like a bear gorging itself on salmon before hibernating for the winter, ...

Event Horizon Telescope: Moving Towards a Close-Up of a Black Hole and Its Jets

Dec. 17, 2024 — After taking the first images of black holes, the groundbreaking Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) is poised to reveal how black holes launch powerful jets into space. Now, a research team has shown that ...

Binary Star Found Near Our Galaxy's Supermassive Black Hole

Dec. 17, 2024 — An international team of researchers has detected a binary star orbiting close to Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy. It is the first time a stellar pair has been found in the vicinity of a supermassive black ...

Astrophysicists Capture Astonishing Images of Gamma-Ray Flare from Supermassive Black Hole M87

Dec. 13, 2024 — The galaxy M87, located in the Virgo constellation, provided the first-ever photo of a black hole in 2019, when the Event Horizon Telescope captured an image of the supermassive black hole at the ...

Latest Headlines

updated 9:03am EST

Black Hole Debate Settled? Stellar-Mass Black Holes Found at the Heart of the Milky Way's Largest Star Cluster

Dec. 9, 2024 — Could a decades-long debate about the mysterious movements of stars in Omega Centauri, the largest star cluster in the Milky Way, finally be ...

Evidence of Primordial Black Holes May Be Hiding in Planets, or Even Everyday Objects Here on Earth

Dec. 2, 2024 — A theoretical study suggests that small black holes born in the early universe may have left behind hollow planetoids and microscopic tunnels, and ...

Gas-Churning Monster Black Holes

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 ...

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, ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 disk (i.e., gaseous spiral surrounding a black ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...