Articles tagged with Black Holes
A team of experts finds a dormant stellar-mass black hole in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a neighbor galaxy to our own. The star that formed the black hole vanished without any sign of a powerful explosion.
A team of scientists led by Clemson University's Marco Ajello has provided conclusive evidence that astrophysical neutrinos come from blazars, which are powerful black holes. This breakthrough resolves the long-standing question about the origin of high-energy cosmic rays.
Astronomers observe a star's destruction and discover that most of its material forms a spherical cloud, blocking high-energy emissions. The polarization of light from the event reveals symmetry in the cloud.
Researchers at University of Cologne and Masaryk University discovered a star, S4716, orbiting Sagittarius A* in just four years and reaching speeds of 8000 kilometers per second. The study sheds new light on the origin and evolution of fast-moving stars near black holes.
A Northwestern University-led team developed a 3D simulation of jet evolution, explaining GRB blinking and rarity. The new model shows that GRBs are punctuated by quiet moments due to wobbling jets, which also indicate they are rarer than previously thought.
A team of scientists used the flickering light of gas around a black hole to construct an accurate model of our galaxy's central black hole. They found that gas is directly infalling from large distances, rather than being siphoned off over time.
Researchers at UC Berkeley have detected a possible free-floating black hole in the Milky Way galaxy using gravitational microlensing. The object's mass is estimated to be between 1.6 and 4.4 times that of the sun, but its nature as a black hole or neutron star remains uncertain.
A team of physicists discovered that clouds of ultralight particles around rotating black holes leave a characteristic imprint on gravitational waves. This finding suggests the existence of new particles with very low mass, predicted by several theories beyond the Standard Model of particle physics.
A team of astronomers found that black holes played a crucial role in preventing rejuvenated star formation in massive quiescent galaxies. By analyzing the combined light from thousands of galaxies, they discovered a low-luminosity active galactic nucleus that may have heated the galaxy's gas, preventing new stars from forming.
Astronomers used the Cosmic Evolution Survey to discover active supermassive black holes in distant galaxies. These findings suggest that a supermassive black hole can disrupt gas and prevent star formation, leading to the sudden end of galaxy star formation.
Researchers have found that stars in distant galaxies are typically more massive than those in the Milky Way, changing our understanding of astronomical phenomena like black holes, supernovae, and galaxy death. This discovery may also explain why galaxies die and stop forming new stars.
Researchers have found a significant number of massive black holes in dwarf galaxies, contradicting previous assumptions that they are rare. The newly discovered black holes offer insights into the life story of the Milky Way's supermassive black hole and its potential mergers with other galaxies.
The Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration has captured the first direct visual evidence of a supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy. The image reveals a dark central region surrounded by a bright ring-like structure, indicating the presence of a massive object four million times more massive than our Sun.
A team of astronomers, including those from MIT's Haystack Observatory, has captured the light around our own supermassive black hole, revealing for the first time an image of Sagitarrius A*, the black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. The resulting image reveals SgrA* in a glowing, donut-shaped ring of light.
The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) has captured the first image of Sagittarius A*, a black hole at the center of the Milky Way, revealing a ring-like structure and shadow. The observation confirms Einstein's theory of general relativity and provides new insights into giant black holes.
A team of University of Illinois researchers, led by Charles Gammie, has captured the first direct visual evidence of a supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. The image reveals a dark central region surrounded by a bright ringlike structure, providing valuable clues about the workings of such giants.
The Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration, led by Caltech's Katherine L. Bouman, generated the first image of Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*) using data from eight radio observatories worldwide. The resulting image confirms Sgr A* is a supermassive black hole with a mass nearly four million times that of the sun.
The Event Horizon Telescope captured the first image of Sagittarius A*, a hot and dense black hole surrounded by superheated gas, improving our understanding of black holes. The Frontera supercomputer supported this achievement through innovative data-driven astronomy.
Researchers developed a technique to study supermassive black holes smaller than M87's by measuring the brightness of their shadows over time. The 'shadow' signal can reveal the size and shape of a black hole's event horizon, shedding light on gravity's nature.
Researchers discover innovative method to test Unruh effect in lab settings, enabling experimentation with high-intensity lasers. They also find acceleration-induced transparency, a phenomenon that could aid in unifying Einstein's general relativity with quantum mechanics.
Researchers have identified the rarest type of black widow binary yet, featuring a pulsar and a third star that orbits every 10,000 years. The system, ZTF J1406+1222, has the shortest orbital period ever recorded, with the pulsar and companion star circling each other in just 62 minutes.
Researchers find that black holes go through a 'hard' and 'soft' state during outbursts, with the final flash possibly indicating a brief expansion of the corona. The findings help scientists understand how supermassive black holes shape galaxy formation.
The Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) mission enables new measurements of cosmic X-ray sources, such as pulsars, black holes, and neutron stars. With its state-of-the-art telescopes and detectors, IXPE will provide high-quality polarization data of various sources, including supernova remnants, active galaxies, and blazars.
Researchers used Chandra X-Ray Observatory to detect X-ray signatures of black holes in nuclear star clusters across 108 galaxies. The study found that above a certain mass and density threshold, these clusters emit x-ray signatures indicative of a black hole at twice the rate below the threshold.
A Northwestern University astrophysics team proposes that fast blue optical transients (FBOTs) originate from the cocoons of jets launched by dying stars. The new model, fully consistent with all FBOT observations, suggests that as the jet pushes the cocoon outward, it cools and releases heat, emitting an observed FBOT emission.
Astronomers have identified a rapidly growing black hole in the early universe, GNz7q, which is considered a crucial 'missing link' between young star-forming galaxies and the first supermassive black holes. The team used Hubble data to determine that GNz7q existed just 750 million years after the big bang, with properties consistent w...
Researchers found a missing link between galaxies and quasars, discovering a supermassive black hole in archived Hubble Space Telescope data. The object, GNz7q, appears to be a black hole just starting to overpower its host galaxy in the process of becoming a quasar.
Astronomers identify GNz7q, a dusty compact object with properties of both galaxies and quasars, born 750 million years after Big Bang. The discovery provides new insights into the rapid growth of supermassive black holes in early universe.
Astronomers have been searching for low-frequency gravitational waves by monitoring pulsar pulses, but now NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope can also be used to detect these waves. The satellite's high-energy light provides a clearer view of pulsars and offers an independent method to detect gravitational waves.
Astronomers used over a decade of Fermi data to search for signs of long gravitational waves from supermassive black hole pairs. Although no waves were detected, the analysis shows that with more observations, these waves may be within Fermi's reach.
Researchers have spotted the most distant astronomical object ever: a galaxy named HD1, 13.5 billion light-years away. The team proposes two ideas: HD1 may be forming stars at an astounding rate and possibly home to Population III stars or contain a supermassive black hole about 100 million times the mass of our Sun.
Researchers proved a conjecture on quantum complexity growth, contradicting the Brown-Susskind intuition that complexity increases linearly for astronomically long times and then remains maximum. Instead, complexity grows linearly with time until it saturates at an exponential point related to system size.
Researchers at Brookhaven Lab propose a cosmological phase transition as the key to supermassive black hole formation in the early universe. This process, facilitated by ultralight dark matter particles, enabled efficient collapse of matter into black holes.
Researchers from Purdue University and other institutions have discovered a supermassive black hole binary system, consisting of two black holes that orbit each other. The system is significant due to its close separation, which may lead to a merger releasing massive energy in gravitational waves.
Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology have discovered a simplified model for quantum gravity called the 'holographic principle' that describes how gravity emerges from quantum mechanics. This breakthrough may also offer new insights into mysterious dark energy.
Researchers propose a new mechanism for eccentric black hole mergers, suggesting that interactions between three black holes in a flat disk environment could lead to chaotic orbits. This finding challenges previous studies on the rarity of such events.
Researchers have leveraged quantum information theory techniques to amplify entanglement in the Hawking effect, a process previously difficult to test due to the faint nature of Hawking radiation. By illuminating event horizons with appropriately chosen quantum states, they can tunably stimulate entanglement production.
A team of astronomers discovered neutron stars blowing hot, warm and cold winds while consuming matter from a nearby star. The discovery provides key information about the behaviors of these extreme cosmic objects, which contribute to the formation of new stars and galaxy evolution.
Astronomers have found that the HR 6819 system, once thought to be the closest black hole to Earth, is actually a binary system without a black hole. The discovery was made using new data from ESO's Very Large Telescope and Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer instruments.
A recent analysis of the 2017 GW170817 merger suggests that a rapid spin delay may have prolonged the merger, producing excess X-ray emissions. The radiation is thought to be produced by shocked material in the circumbinary medium, hinting at a bounce from the delayed collapse.
For the first time, scientists have measured a large difference between a black hole's rotation axis and the axis of its orbiting binary star system. This finding forces astronomers to add a new dimension to their models, offering new insights into black hole formation and physics.
Researchers from the University of Turku found that a black hole's axis of rotation is tilted more than 40 degrees relative to the orbiting stellar body. This extreme misalignment challenges current theoretical models and opens up new prospects for studying black hole formation and evolution.
Researchers have found evidence for two supermassive black holes orbiting each other every two years, with masses hundreds of millions times larger than our sun. The quasar's radio-light brightness exhibits sinusoidal variations due to the pair's motion, providing a nearly perfect light curve.
Recent research uses gravitational waves to assess what fraction of dark matter could be in the form of massive primordial black holes. The study sets an upper limit of less than half for such heavy black holes within a mass range of 100 to 100,000 solar masses.
Astronomers have confirmed a 30-year-old theory about active galactic nuclei (AGNs) by discovering a supermassive black hole hiding in a thick ring of cosmic dust. The findings provide new insight into how AGNs work and could help understand the history of the Milky Way.
Researchers predict LISA will detect new fundamental fields, shedding light on dark matter and the universe's expansion. The space interferometer will observe gravitational waves from extreme mass-ratio inspirals, providing a unique opportunity to probe strong-field gravity.
Researchers suggest LISA can detect scalar fields interacting with gravity, providing strong bounds on theories beyond General Relativity. Extreme Mass Ratio Inspirals offer a unique probe of the strong-field regime of gravity.
The study reveals that a single folding mechanism can generate an infinite family of shapes in flexible structures. Researchers have developed a novel approach to predict and control tough, flexible structures from skyscrapers to microscale using conformal deformations.
A new simulation suggests that energy released near a black hole's event horizon during magnetic field line reconnection powers the intense flares. The process involves interactions between the magnetic field and material falling into the black hole, releasing hot plasma particles that radiate away as photons.
Astronomers have found an intermediate-mass black hole in the Andromeda galaxy, one of only a few confirmed objects of its kind. The discovery sheds light on the formation of galaxies and provides insights into the population of black holes at the centers of low-mass galaxies.
Researchers confirm a rare and massive black hole merger with an eccentric orbit, shedding light on the formation of supermassive black holes in dense star clusters. The study's findings have significant implications for our understanding of black hole dynamics and the evolution of galaxies.
Astronomers have discovered that a black hole at the center of the Henize 2-10 galaxy is actively promoting new star formation, with newborn clusters spotted along an outflow of gas stretching 230 light-years from the black hole. This finding sheds light on the origins of supermassive black holes in the early universe.
Researchers estimate 1% of ordinary matter is locked up in stellar mass black holes, with 40 trillion black holes in observable Universe. The study uses a new method combining stellar evolution codes and empirical prescriptions for galaxy properties.
A team of researchers led by Alexis Andrés analyzed 15 years' worth of data from NASA's Swift Observatory to find that Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the center of the Milky Way, flares irregularly both day-to-day and in the long term.
An international team of astronomers has found strong evidence for an ultra-low frequency signal, consistent with the expected characteristics of a gravitational wave background. The discovery was made using data from 65 millisecond pulsars, combining independent data sets from around the world.
A new study by Ohio State University researchers has confirmed that black holes are indeed giant fuzzballs, a concept first proposed in 2004. The study proved theorems showing that the fuzzball theory remains the most likely solution to Hawking's paradox, which had long plagued the string theory community. In contrast, the wormhole par...
Astronomers captured the most comprehensive image of radio emission from a supermassive black hole in the Centaurus A galaxy, powered by in-falling gas. The eruption extends eight degrees across the sky, spanning 16 full moons, and reveals spectacular new details of the radio emission.
A team of astronomers has developed a new technique to detect active black holes in galaxies, measuring their impact on galaxy evolution. The method can be applied to millions of galaxies, searching for bright supermassive black holes at the centre of galaxies and studying their effect on star formation.
A team of astronomers has made the most precise measurements yet of the motions of stars around Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. The research, using cutting-edge facilities like Gemini Observatory and the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope, shows that nearly all of the mass c...
Researchers discovered a compact object in supernova AT2018cow, which was a product of a dying star. The team found X-ray pulses indicating an object measuring no more than 1,000 kilometers wide and with a mass smaller than 800 suns.