Stranger Than Fiction: The Monster in the Middle of the Milky Way Is…Spinning Slowly?
The monstrous black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy—now of Nobel Prize fame—is proving yet again to be stranger than fiction. New…
Black Hole
Andrea Ghez Awarded 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics for Supermassive Black Hole Discovery
Andrea Ghez (Caltech MS ’89, PhD ’92), the Lauren B. Leichtman and Arthur E. Levine Professor of Astrophysics at UCLA, has won the 2020 Nobel…
The Recipe for Powerful Quasar Jets: Why Some Supermassive Black Holes Launch Powerful Beams
Some supermassive black holes launch powerful beams of material, or jets, away from them, while others do not. Astronomers may now have identified why. Using…
Star’s Death by Spaghettification: Shredded by Black Hole As Astronomers Record
A rare blast of light, emitted by a star as it is sucked in by a supermassive black hole, has been spotted by scientists using…
Front-Row Seats to Star’s Death by Spaghettification
Astronomers have captured the last moments of a star just before it was ripped apart by a black hole. The violent occurrence—called a tidal disruption…
Death by Spaghettification: Telescopes Record Last Moments of Star Devoured by a Black Hole
Using telescopes from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and other organizations around the world, astronomers have spotted a rare blast of light from a star…
Andrea Ghez Wins Nobel Prize in Physics for Pioneering Research on the Milky Way’s Supermassive Black Hole
Andrea Ghez, UCLA’s Lauren B. Leichtman and Arthur E. Levine Professor of Astrophysics, today was awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in physics. Ghez shares half of the…
Andrea Ghez Wins Share of 2020 Nobel Prize for Discoveries in Black Hole Physics
Astrophysicist Andrea Ghez ’87 has been awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics, announced today by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm. She…
Ripples in the Fabric of Space and Time Offer New Clues to the Shape of Black Holes
A team of gravitational-wave scientists led by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav) reveal that when two black holes collide and…
Physicist Simplifies Einstein-Lovelock Theory for Black Holes
Allowing for quantum corrections, the Einstein-Lovelock theory describes black holes with an equation that contains an infinite number of terms. However, according to a RUDN…
Unique Test of General Relativity Using a Black Hole – Einstein’s Theory Remains Intact Even Under Extreme Conditions
If a picture is worth a thousand words, what might the first horizon-scale image of a black hole tell us? A new paper by researchers…
“Echo Mapping” Light Bursts From Supermassive Black Holes in Faraway Galaxies to Measure Vast Cosmic Distances
Matter swirling around supermassive black holes creates bursts of light that “echo” in nearby dust clouds. These traveling signals could serve as a new cosmic…
Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity Tested Using Black Hole Shadow
Einstein’s description of gravity just got much harder to beat after astrophysicists put general relativity to a new test with black hole images. Einstein’s theory…
Galaxies Trapped in the Web of a Supermassive Black Hole – Cosmic “Spider’s Web” of Gas Extends Over 300 Times the Size of the Milky Way
With the help of ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), astronomers have found six galaxies lying around a supermassive black hole when the Universe was less…
Insight-HXMT Discovers Closest High-Speed Relativistic Jet to Black Hole
Insight-HXMT, China’s first space X-ray astronomical satellite, has discovered a low-frequency quasi-periodic oscillation (QPO) above 200 kiloelectron volts (keV) in a black hole binary, making…
Event Horizon Telescope Reveals Turbulent Black Hole Evolution: Wobbling Shadow of the M87 Black Hole
Analysis of the event horizon telescope observations from 2009-2017 reveals turbulent evolution of the M87 black hole image. In 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT)…
Cosmic X-Rays Reveal a Distinctive Signature of Black Hole Event Horizons
An international team of astrophysicists has found a distinctive signature of black hole event horizons, unmistakably separating them from neutron stars — objects, comparable to…
Innovative New Method Developed to Detect Colliding Supermassive Black Holes
A new study has developed an innovative method to detect colliding supermassive black holes in our Universe. The study has just been published in the Astrophysical…