Black Hole

Black Hole

stephan's quintet miri JWST
What are supermassive black holes, how common are they, and how do they grow up throughout cosmic history? Listen and find out!
flight through universe CEERS JWST NASA
From the present day all the way to less than 400 million years after the Big Bang, we're seeing how the Universe grew up like never before.
Black hole jet shadow M87
Some 55 million light-years away lies the giant galaxy Messier 87. Its supermassive black hole, inside and out, looks better than ever.
map with 68 millisecond pulsars
After 15 years of monitoring 68 objects known as millisecond pulsars, we've found the Universe's background gravitational wave signal!
an artist's rendering of a black hole in the sky.
In a distant galaxy, a cosmic dance between two supermassive black holes emits periodic flashes of light.
Hubble view of galaxy containing GRB 221009A BOAT
The brightest gamma-ray burst ever observed, GRB 221009A behaved in unexpected ways that might help us understand how they occur.
an image of a black hole in the sky.
There are 40 billion billion black holes in the universe. Here’s how our Solar System stacks up against ten of them.
hubble tension
When Einstein gave General Relativity to the world, he included an extraneous cosmological constant. How did his 'biggest blunder' occur?
black hole emission radiation
In 1974, Hawking showed that black holes aren't stable, but emit radiation and decay. Nearly 50 years later, it isn't just for black holes.
a hand is holding a ball with a model of the solar system.
42mins
Sabine Hossenfelder talks about Albert Einstein, dead grandmothers, the physics of aging, and more in this full interview with Big Think.
epsilon eridani comet storm
Massive objects like black holes, stars, and rogue planets routinely pass near our Solar System. An ensuing comet storm could destroy us.
stellar remnants black holes planet
The odds are slim, but the consequences would be literally world-ending. There really is a chance of a black hole devouring the Earth.
a black hole in the center of a space filled with stars.
Though he renounced philosophy, Stephen Hawking's final theory of the universe redraws the basic foundations of cosmology.
a very large cluster of stars in the sky.
Stars orbiting black holes were observed to move significantly slower than expected. One explanation centers on dark matter.
wormholes
Leading a scientific revolution is easy: you just have to succeed where the current theory fails while equaling its successes. Good luck!
Hubble view of galaxy containing GRB 221009A BOAT
Gamma-ray bursts are among the most energetic cosmic events of all. On October 9, 2022, a remarkable one occurred: the brightest ever seen.
photon paths around black hole
What do we mean by a black hole's size? A photon sphere? The minimal stable orbit? The event horizon? The singularity? Which one is right?
runaway supermassive black hole
Speeding through the Universe and leaving a wake of new stars, this runaway supermassive black hole is likely the first among thousands.
WR 124 JWST composite
This beautiful JWST image of Wolf-Rayet star WR 124 has been called a "prelude to a supernova" by NASA. That might be entirely wrong.
nasa merge black hole
When supermassive black holes merge, they emit more energy than anything else to occur in our Universe except the Big Bang.
crab pulsar remnant
We can't go back to the Big Bang, nor ahead to the heat death of the Universe. Nevertheless, here are today's natural temperature extremes.
hypermassive neutron star
Somewhere out there in the Universe is the heaviest neutron star, and elsewhere lies the lightest black hole. Where's the line between them?
quantum entanglement qubit ER = EPR
Two very different ideas, wormholes and quantum entanglement, might be fundamentally related. What would "ER = EPR" mean for our Universe?
planetary nebulae infrared spitzer
What kind of object will you form? What will its fate be? How long will a star live? Almost everything is determined by mass alone.
NASA spitzer infrared
JWST's revolutionary views arrive in high-resolution at infrared wavelengths. Without NASA's Spitzer first, it wouldn't have been possible.
Nothing in this Universe is eternal — not even the stars.
UNCOVER NIRCam mosaic
An incredible composite image of Pandora's Cluster, Abell 2744, simultaneously showcases both our impressive knowledge and vast ignorance.
EHT event horizons
Since its observation discovery in the 1990s, dark energy has been one of science's biggest mysteries. Could black holes be the cause?
A bright flash of light in the Universe
In general relativity, white holes are just as mathematically plausible as black holes. Black holes are real; what about white holes?
In just a few seconds, a gamma-ray burst blasts out the same amount of energy that the Sun will radiate throughout its entire life.