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Articles on Supermassive black holes

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A quasar is a galactic object with a supermassive black hole in the center. International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/P. Marenfeld

Powerful black holes might grow up in bustling galactic neighborhoods

An astronomer and ‘black hole historian’ explains how the parts of the universe black holes grow in might influence how quickly they become bright, supermassive objects.
The colliding cluster Abell 3266 as seen across the electromagnetic spectrum, using data from ASKAP and the ATCA (red/orange/yellow colours), XMM-Newton (blue) and the Dark Energy Survey (background map). Christopher Riseley (Università di Bologna)

We found some strange radio sources in a distant galaxy cluster. They’re making us rethink what we thought we knew.

One of the objects is a ‘fossil’ radio source – a leftover from the death of a supermassive black hole that once shot out huge jets of plasma.
ESO/WFI (Optical); MPIfR/ESO/APEX/A.Weiss et al. (Submillimetre); NASA/CXC/CfA/R.Kraft et al. (X-ray)

Some black holes are anything but black – and we’ve found more than 75,000 of the brightest ones

Despite the name, some black holes effectively “shine” as they suck up nearby material with such force that it begins to glow. New research reveals a new method for detecting these active black holes.
A person falling into a black hole and being stretched while approaching the black hole’s horizon. Leo Rodriguez and Shanshan Rodriguez

Could a human enter a black hole to study it?

If you are a sci-fi junkie you’ve probably wondered what would happen if you were unlucky enough to fall into a black hole. How well you’d fare all depends on the type of black hole.
An artist’s conception of two black holes entwined in a gravitational tango. NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Christopher Go

Supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy may have a friend

There is a massive black hole in the center of the Milky Way galaxy. Measurements of star orbits near this black hole suggest that there may be a second companion black hole nearby.

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