Black Holes
Hungry Black Hole was Already Feasting 800 Million Years After the Big Bang
Black holes swallow everything—including light—which explains why we can't see them. But we can observe their immediate surroundings and learn…
The Donut That Used To Be a Star
The death of a star is one of the most dramatic natural events in the Universe. Some stars die in…
A Black Hole is Savoring its Meal, Feeding on the Same Star Over and Over Again
Something extraordinary happens about every 10,000 to 100,000 years in galaxies like the Milky Way. An unwary star approaches the…
What Does it Take to Make Black Holes Collide?
In a recent study published in Astronomy and Astrophysical Letters, a team of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology…
Webb’s New Image Reveals a Galaxy Awash in Star Formation
When a spiral galaxy presents itself just right, observations reveal more detail. That's the case with NGC 7469, a spiral…
A Star Came too Close to a Black Hole. It Didn’t End Well
Black holes are confounding objects that stretch physics to its limits. The most massive ones lurk in the centers of…
Black Holes Shouldn’t be Able to Merge, but Dozens of Mergers Have Been Detected. How Do They Do It?
Who knows what lurks in the hearts of some globular clusters? Astronomers using a collection of gravitational wave observatories found…
A Black Hole has been Burping for 100 Million Years
Black holes are gluttonous behemoths that lurk in the center of galaxies. Almost everybody knows that nothing can escape them,…
A Black Hole Consumed a Star and Released the Light of a Trillion Suns
When a flash of light appears somewhere in the sky, astronomers notice. When it appears in a region of the…