In the center of our galaxy, gigantic, balloon-like structures of high-energy radiation extend thousands of light-years above and below the Milky Way’s plane. Known as the Fermi bubbles, the massive lobes may have been the result of a violent outburst in our galaxy’s recent past. A new discovery of cold hydrogen clouds embedded inside the […]
Astronomers Detect a Black Hole Merger That’s So Massive It Shouldn’t Exist
Gravitational waves—ripples in space-time caused by violent cosmic events—travel at the speed of light in every direction, eventually fading out like ripples in water. But some events are so destructive and extreme that they create disturbances in spacetime more like powerful waves than small ripples, with enough energy to reach our own detectors here on […]
Physicists Propose Cheaper Alternative to Particle Colliders: Supermassive Black Holes
A new study from Johns Hopkins University suggests that supermassive black holes—those cosmic behemoths lurking at the centers of galaxies—might already be generating the kinds of high-energy particle collisions researchers have spent decades trying to recreate here on Earth. Published today in Physical Review Letters, the study proposes that certain spinning black holes could serve […]
Scientists Are Creeping Closer to Colorized Black Hole Images
Black holes are infamous for being invisible. But thanks to a new technique from the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) team, we’re about to start seeing them in color. Astronomers have figured out a way to observe the radio sky in multiple frequencies at once, allowing them to create full-color images of supermassive black holes. The […]
A Rogue Black Hole of Unusual Size Is Devouring Stars in a Distant Galaxy
Astronomers have spotted an apparent supermassive black hole snacking on a star 600 million light-years away, wandering through a galaxy with an even larger black hole at its core. The event, dubbed AT2024tvd, was first spotted by the Palomar Observatory’s Zwicky Transient Facility and later confirmed by powerhouse space telescopes including Hubble and Chandra, which […]
Are We Inside a Black Hole? Wonky Galaxy Movements Suggest It’s Possible, Physicist Says
One researcher’s analysis of Webb Space Telescope images could indicate that we’re all stuck in a black hole, according to research published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. “The main finding of the study is that the vast majority of the galaxies in the universe, as seen from Earth, rotate in the […]
The Milky Way’s Black Hole Is Producing a Brilliant Light Show
The black hole at the center of our galaxy is experiencing a flurry of flares, ranging from flickers to brilliant eruptions, according to a team that analyzed data from recent observations by the Webb Space Telescope. The observations detailed the extreme environment in the immediate vicinity of Sagittarius A* (pronounced A-star), the supermassive black hole […]
LISA: What the Revolutionary Gravitational Wave Observatory Will Actually See
LISA, a $1.6 billion gravitational wave observatory set to launch next decade, will revolutionize the way we see gravitational waves—the infinitesimal perturbations of spacetime first predicted over a century ago and only detected eight years ago. In the fall, we published a deep-dive into LISA’s design and the engineering hurdles that must be overcome to […]