Black holes could ‘bend it like Beckham’ to reveal hidden asymmetries of the universe

By observing tiny ripples in spacetime called “gravitational waves” that propagate away from colliding black holes, scientists could reveal hidden asymmetries in the universe. The team behind new research on the topic suggests that measuring whether gravitational waves from black hole mergers are right- or left-handed can tell us if the Cosmological Principle — an … Read more

There Could Be a Supermassive Black Hole in the Large Magellanic Cloud Hurling Stars at the Milky Way

Hypervelocity stars (HVSs) were first theorized to exist in the late 1980s. In 2005, the first discoveries were confirmed. HVSs travel much faster than normal stars, and sometimes, they can exceed the galactic escape velocity. Astronomers estimate that the Milky Way contains about 1,000 HVSs, and new research shows that some of these originate in … Read more

Scientists discover black holes spinning unexpectedly fast: ‘You’re essentially looking at its fossil record’

Scientists have discovered that some supermassive black holes rotate much more rapidly than expected. The discovery came as the result of a new form of “black hole archeology” that links black hole spins to the gas and dust they have consumed to grow over 7 billion years of cosmic history. The findings, courtesy of the … Read more

The top 7 black hole discoveries from 2024

Our fascination with black holes is pretty understandable; their one-way boundary, the “event horizon,” traps light, meaning no signal can ever travel from inside a black hole to outside. The edge of the black hole is thus a region of space and time that expressly forbids interlopers. That’s a recipe for mystery. And we all … Read more

Want to find a black hole? Pick up a rock

This artist’s concept shows many tiny primordial black holes. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center While black holes are perplexing at any size, some of the most mysterious are hypothetical primordial black holes, those that sprung into existence in the first second after the Big Bang and some of which are featherweights on the black … Read more

‘Missing link’ black hole in the Milky Way’s densest star cluster is still missing

New research may have delivered bad news for scientists who thought they had discovered a “missing link” black hole in a dense Milky Way star cluster. The new findings imply that, rather than a rare intermediate-mass black hole, there is a cluster of stellar-mass black holes in Omega Centauri, believed to be the remains of … Read more

James Webb Space Telescope catches monster black hole napping after ‘overeating’ in the early universe

Napping after overfeeding on food is a dilemma many of us will be fortunate to face on Christmas Day. New research has shown that, billions of years ago, some early black holes also had to nap after overindulging. Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers spotted a dormant supermassive black hole that existed just … Read more

New Research may Explain how Supermassive Black Holes in the Early Universe Grew so Fast

Not long ago, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) peered into Cosmic Dawn, the cosmological period when the first galaxies formed less than one billion years after the Big Bang. In the process, it discovered something rather surprising. Not only were there more galaxies (and brighter ones, too!) than expected, but these galaxies had supermassive … Read more