Could black holes create dark energy?
Black holes are the universe’s shadowy figures, with many millions of them roaming unseen in our galaxy alone. These cosmic heavyweights famously destroy anything that wanders too close, tearing stars...
View ArticleHow some black holes maintain long-distance relationships
The European Space Agency’s Gaia emission has revealed two unexpected black holes orbiting stars like our own Sun. One minor problem: we’re not exactly sure how black holes like this should form. But a...
View ArticleJWST just found a black hole starving its host galaxy to death
Astronomer Francesco D’Eugenio wasn’t looking for a murdered galaxy. His team set out to measure the motions of stars in a distant galaxy and to understand why they appeared so old. Similar massive...
View ArticleThis black hole is gulping material 40 times faster than the theoretical limit
For decades, astronomers have puzzled over how the supermassive black holes residing in the center of galaxies form. Now, researchers may have found the biggest clue yet to how these monstrous objects...
View ArticleWant to find a black hole? Pick up a rock
While black holes are perplexing at any size, some of the most mysterious are hypothetical primordial black holes, those that sprung into existence in the first second after the Big Bang and some of...
View ArticleSupermassive black hole births jets, hosts orbiting white dwarf, all while...
In 2018, a distant black hole threw a fit. The 1.4-million-solar-mass black hole at the center of the galaxy 1ES 1927+654 some 270 million light-years away suddenly began spewing radiation, flaring in...
View ArticleUnusual spiral quasar seen dancing with a companion
The jets of a supermassive black hole are one of the cosmos’ greatest spectacles — and also one of its greatest mysteries. These beams of ionized matter burst forth from the cores of galaxies at speeds...
View ArticleOur near galactic neighbor might have a supermassive black hole
The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is one of the Milky Way’s closest neighbors. It’s a small, irregular galaxy that orbits the Milky Way, and is an easy naked-eye object from the Southern Hemisphere. As...
View ArticleHow do neutrino telescopes work?
The neutrino is one of the most common particles in the universe, but you would never know it. In fact, it wasn’t until the 1930s that we even became aware of its existence. What is a neutrino? Noting...
View ArticleThis dead star is still sending us radio signals
Astronomers have finally identified the source of mysterious radio waves from deep space, tracing the signals back to an unusual stellar pair locked in a swift orbit, flashing out their location for...
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