We sort-of take it for granted that there’s a supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy, but we can’t really go there and check. What if something else is actually lurking in this messy, dusty region?
Physicists have spent centuries grappling with an inconvenient truth about nature: Faced with three stars on a collision course, astronomers could measure their locations and velocities in nanometers and milliseconds and it wouldn’t be enough to predict the stars’ fates.
Astronomers have discovered one of the smallest black holes to date, sitting just 1,500 light-years away which also makes it the closest one to Earth found so far. And they have called it “the Unicorn.”
A team has offered a way for gravitational wave events called dark sirens to resolve a crisis in cosmology
A powerful blast from the supermassive black hole may explain a lack of large, red stars there
Black holes are, by far, the most mysterious objects in the universe. They are objects in the cosmos where all of our knowledge of physics completely breaks down.
The most active type of black holes are believed to consume so much material surrounding them that they could eventually eliminate their entire host galaxy. The process of consuming matter around the black hole is intense enough that, in some instances, it creates a highly energetic object called a quasar that is one of the brightest objects in the universe. Researchers have discovered a galaxy that survives the ravenous black hole at its center by creating new stars.
Gravitational-wave scientists have unveiled their latest catalog of events, revealing a surprising number of massive black holes.
Black holes are powerful engines of pure gravity, capable of pulling on objects so intensely that they can’t possibly escape.
Death by spaghettification and a stellar peacock.
