If you got too close to a black hole, it would suck you in and you’d never be able to escape, even if you were travelling at the speed of light.
This point of no return is called the event horizon.
Astronomers say they have “seen what we thought was unseeable” in releasing the first image of a supermassive black hole. So how did we get to this historic observation?
Astronomers traced a single star as it passed close to the black hole at the centre of our galaxy, and detected the telltale signature of Einstein’s gravity in action.
The pull created by a black hole is so strong that if you get too close to one – even if you are travelling away from it at the fastest speed it is possible to go – you will never be able escape.
Black holes may come in many sizes, but there’s still a gap in the middle. The hunt is on to solve the mystery of where are the intermediate size black holes.
It’s difficult to get jets - powerful, lightning fast particles - to give up their secrets. The new Square Kilometre Array radio telescope could hold the key to solving jets’ mysteries.
Astronomers have detected clumpy gas clouds on the verge of being swallowed by a supermassive black hole, rushing towards it at over 537,000 miles an hour.
It’s taken centuries for our understanding of gravity to evolve to where it is today, culminating in the discovery of gravitational waves, as predicted by Albert Einstein a century ago.