It takes something as stupendous as the merger between two black holes to generate detectable gravitational waves. Here’s how such incredible cosmic objects form.
Computer simulation of two merging black holes producing gravitational waves.
Werner Benger.
It is the physics discovery of the century – even bigger than the Higgs Boson. Here’s how it happened and what it means, by a key member of one of the lead teams
Supermassive black holes, containing as much mass as millions or billions of suns, exist at the centre of all galaxies, including our own Milky Way.
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
The information paradox is one of the great mysteries in our understanding of black holes. But has the famous theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking found the solution?
There may be more and bigger black holes out there than we thought. Do we need a map?
ESO/wikimedia
Two white dwarfs found orbiting each other at the centre of a planetary nebula are now known to have enough mass that they will eventually trigger a special kind of supernova, according to research published…
Gemini North observatory, on Hawaii’s Mauna Kea, shoots a laser beam into the night sky to create an ‘artificial star’, part of a process that helps astronomers remove blurring from any images of galaxies.
Gemini Observatory and Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy
A supermassive black hole has been found in an ultracompact dwarf galaxy – the smallest galaxy known to contain such a massive black hole. This finding, published today in Nature, suggests that supermassive…
Scary but fascinating.
NASA and M. Weiss (Chandra X -ray Center)
Katherine Mack, astrophysicist at the University of Melbourne, answered questions posed by the public on Reddit. The Conversation has curated the highlights. Dark Matter How do you explain dark matter…
Artist’s impression of a microquasar, such as the newly-discovered MQ1 in the M83 galaxy.
TD Russell (ICRAR-Curtin) using the BINSIM visualisation code by R Hynes (LSU)
A black hole with extremely powerful jets has been found in the nearby galaxy Messier 83 (M83) by a team of Australian and American researchers, as we report in the journal Science today. Black holes are…
Stephen Hawking stirs the debate on black holes. But is he right?
Flickr/NASA HQ PHOTO
Over the past few days, the media has cried out the recent proclamation from Stephen Hawking that black holes, a mystery of both science and science fiction, do not exist. Such statements send social media…
We’ve known about the energetic jets that spew matter from black holes for nearly a century, but what are they made of?
NASA
While we tend to think of black holes as giant cosmic vacuum cleaners, it’s not all one-way travel. As gas falls in towards a black hole, it spirals gradually inwards like water going down a plug hole…
New research shows supermassive black holes are bigger than the sum of their parts.
NASA/CXC/A.Hobart
Galaxies may look pretty and delicate, with their swirls of stars of many colours - but don’t be fooled. At the heart of every galaxy lies a supermassive black hole, including in our own Milky Way. Black…
Dusty breeze from this black hole might be a star one day.
ESO-M Kornmesser
Matter escaping from the clutches of mysterious black holes may be responsible for forming stars, according to new research that explores how galaxies are formed. Much has been learnt about black holes…
How is the spin of black holes measured, and what can it tell us about our universe?
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
Astronomers have measured the spin of a black hole buried in the heart of a galaxy located 56 million light years away, and discovered it was spinning quickly – about as quickly as it could go. That was…
The reflected light from black holes enables astronomers to see how fast matter is swirling in the inner region of the disk, and ultimately to measure the black hole’s spin rate.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
Scientists in the US have successfully used a new NASA telescope to help improve our understanding of how black holes and galaxies evolve. Using data taken by the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array…
Black holes have been growing faster than previously thought, the new research found.
Gabriel Perez Diaz
Australian researchers have redefined the relationship between galaxies and their black holes, showing that a widely-accepted method for calculating the mass of smaller black holes was wrong. The breakthrough…