Tag: Black Holes

Researchers in South Korea are developing a constellation of satellites that could reveal what goes on in the vicinity of supermassive black holes like never before. The constellation, dubbed Capella, is a brainchild of Seoul National University astronomy professor Sascha Trippe. An expert in black holes, Trippe has grown frustrated with the limitations of humanity’s existing instruments for observing black holes and concerned that unless major technological advances are made, research may soon reach a “dead end.” When the first-ever image of a supermassive black hole — the one at…

Nothing is supposed to escape a black hole’s event horizon — yet new research suggests it may secretly leak information. That leakage would appear in subtle signatures in gravitational waves, and now we know how to look for them, the study authors say. In 1976, Stephen Hawking rocked the astrophysics world with his discovery that black holes aren’t entirely black. Instead, they emit tiny amounts of radiation and, given enough time, can give off so much that they disappear entirely. But this introduced a massive problem. Information flows into black…

Astronomers have discovered the first binary stars orbiting a supermassive black hole. The stellar pairing in question orbits the cosmic titan at the heart of the Milky Way, Sagittarius A*. The binary stars, designated D9, were found in data collected by the Very Large Telescope (VLT), located atop Cerro Paranal, an 8,645-foot-tall (2,635-meter) mountain in Chile’s Atacama Desert. By measuring their velocity, the team behind the discovery was surprised to find they were two stars, not one. The fact that these binary stars so near Sgr A* have survived the…

In 2018, it was revealed that a pioneering telescope the size of Earth had taken, for the first time, an image of a black hole. That same instrument, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), has now witnessed the same black hole erupt with a powerful and unexpected explosion. Scientists hope that by studying this emission, they can better model the structure surrounding supermassive black holes. The flare, which lasted for about three days in April and May 2018, erupted from the supermassive black hole designated M87*, which liesat the heart of…

Astronomers have stumbled upon a pair of massive black holes in a distant galaxy that are triggering unusual bursts of light. These bright emissions, which appear to peak on a regular cycle, may be caused by the black hole duo disrupting a massive gas cloud — a phenomenon researchers say is the first of its kind to be detected. The cosmic behemoths reside at the center of a galaxy named 2MASX J21240027+3409114, located roughly 1 billion light-years away in the northern constellation Cygnus. These black holes complete an orbit once…

To measure the masses and spins of black holes, scientists want to follow clues left behind by light that takes a round-a-bout journey, bends around these voids, and ultimately shines toward us. The crew, from Princeton University and Los Alamos National Laboratory, has performed complex computer simulations to show how two telescopes — one on Earth, the other in space — can work together to make the idea a reality. In other words, these devices could help us detect light that has basically been on a trip around a black…

Black holes exert a tremendous influence on their surroundings, meaning that when they spin, they literally drag the very fabric of space and time around with them. That means nothing can sit still around a rotating black hole, including the “plates” that these cosmic titans feed from. Those flattened clouds of gas and dust surrounding supermassive black holes are known as accretion disks. Around some supermassive black holes, the churning of these disks is one of the most efficient ways of converting energy in the known universe — changing gravitational…