Black holes

Latest about Black holes

a misty, dark yellow disc of gas hangs in hazy space, circling a small pin of light at its center.

A massive black hole may be 'waking up' in a nearby galaxy

By Sharmila Kuthunur published

Astronomers have, for the first time, spotted a black hole in a nearby galaxy waking up from a deep slumber.

Black Holes
This illustration depicts two quasars in the process of merging. Using both the Gemini North telescope and the Subaru Telescope, a team of astronomers have discovered a pair of merging quasars seen only 900 million years after the Big Bang. Not only is this the most distant pair of merging quasars ever found, but also the first confirmed pair found in the period of the universe known as cosmic dawn.

How 2 quasars at the dawn of time could be a Rosetta stone for the early universe

By Keith Cooper published

The two active supermassive black holes are the most distant pair of quasars ever seen and shed more light on how the universe transformed into what it is today.

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dark orange and brown gas swirls in a disk around a black orb, which spews bright red gas upward. to its left, a smaller black point shoots a light gas upward too.

At the heart of this distant galaxy lies not 1, but 2 jet-blasting black holes

By Keith Cooper published

The two black holes at the heart of the galaxy OJ 287 are true behemoths with masses of 18.35 billion and 150 million times the mass of our Sun.

Black Holes
A spacey expanse that fades from starry black on the left to gaseous blue on the right half. A white square captures a small purple star on the left. White lines extend from the bottom corners to an image in the bottom left of yellow and red gas circling a black spot that shoots white light up and down.

12 billion years of black hole history, revealed through X-rays and simulations

By Keith Cooper published

New findings show the black hole at the heart of our Milky Way galaxy had a late growth spurt.

Black Holes
An burnt orange background with one large dark square and three smaller dark squares all containing blue glows

NASA telescope spots 'cosmic fireworks' and faint echos from the Milky Way's supermassive black hole

By Robert Lea published

NASA's NuSTAR telescope found evidence of cosmic fireworks and X-ray echoes coming from the Milky Way's supermassive black hole Sagittarius A*.

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A golden swirl with yellow light emerging from its center

Hubble Telescope maps high-speed 'burps' from nearby feeding supermassive black hole for 1st time

By Robert Lea published

Hubble has mapped the outflow "burps" of a nearby feeding supermassive black hole-powered quasar for the first time, measuring speeds of 6.5 million mph, around 8,500 times the speed of sound.

Black Holes
A black circle outlined with a white swirl in a sea of red, blue, yellow and green blobs

'Supercharged rhino' black holes may have formed and died a second after the Big Bang

By Robert Lea published

Tiny 'supercharged' black holes born just after the Big Bang may have been brief companions to primordial black holes, dying before the universe was a second old.

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A purple scene showing two outlines of black holes in the center, on their way toward colliding.

Could these black hole 'morsels' finally prove Stephen Hawking's famous theory?

By Robert Lea published

Stephen Hawking suggested black holes "leak " and evaporate away — scientists could use "morsels" launched from catastrophic black hole collisions to prove it.

Black Holes
A blue scene with hazy bits of gas. In the middle-left of the image, there's a very sparkly blue area.

Elusive medium-size black holes may form in dense 'birthing nests'

By Robert Lea published

A new simulation has shown elusive intermediate-mass black holes may form in dense globular clusters of millions of tightly packed stars, thanks to a chaotic collision chain.

Black Holes
A dark scene of space has illustrations of a bunch of black circles with hazy white rings around each one.

If the Big Bang created miniature black holes, where are they?

By Robert Lea published

Primordial black holes born from density fluctuations dating back to the Big Bang have been frustratingly elusive, but a new quantum clue has been discovered.

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