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Event Horizon
Nothing lives forever, at least, not in the known Universe. But relativity allows us to get closer than ever: from a physics perspective.
If all massive objects emit Hawking radiation, not just black holes alone, then everything is unstable, even the Universe. Can that be true?
According to Stephen Hawking, spontaneously emitted radiation should cause all black holes to decay. But we've never seen it: not even once.
Just 165,000 light-years away, the Large Magellanic Cloud is suspected to house a supermassive black hole. At last, evidence has arrived.
Seven years ago, an outburst in a distant galaxy brightened and faded away. Afterward, a new supermassive black hole jet emerged, but how?
Many of us look at black holes as cosmic vacuum cleaners: sucking in everything in their vicinity. But it turns out they don't suck at all.
Hawking’s refusal to upgrade his communication system preserved a voice that became iconic, not just for its sound, but for the profound identity it conveyed.
50 years ago, Stephen Hawking showed that black holes emit radiation and eventually decay away. That fate may now apply to everything.
Black holes encode information on their surfaces, but evaporate away into Hawking radiation. Is that information preserved, and if so, how?
Interferometry gave us a black hole's event horizon, but that was in the radio. What can we accomplish with a new optical interferometer?
Gravitational waves carry enormous amounts of energy, but spread out quickly once they leave the source. Could they ever create black holes?
6mins
“You’re not meant to understand what I just said, because I don’t understand what I just said…” Physicist Brian Cox on one of the most complex theories in space science.
Want to avoid getting "spaghettified" by a black hole? Steer clear of the smaller ones.
Here's why the answer may forever elude scientists.
The brilliant mind who discovered the spacetime solution for rotating black holes claims singularities don't physically exist. Is he right?
The matter that creates black holes won't be what comes out when they evaporate. Will the black hole information paradox ever be solved?
9mins
Ever wonder what would happen if we got sucked into a black hole? Turns out we could live in it for a while — if it was big enough.
Nothing can escape from a black hole. So where do Hawking radiation, relativistic jets, and X-ray emissions around black holes come from?
Some 55 million light-years away lies the giant galaxy Messier 87. Its supermassive black hole, inside and out, looks better than ever.
The odds are slim, but the consequences would be literally world-ending. There really is a chance of a black hole devouring the Earth.
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?
We'll never be able to extract any information about what's inside a black hole's event horizon. Here's why a singularity is inevitable.
At 1,600 light years away, the black hole is practically in our cosmic backyard.
The ESA's Gaia mission just broke the record for closest black hole by over 1,000 light-years. Is there an even closer one out there?
In 1974, Stephen Hawking showed that even black holes don't live forever, but emit radiation and eventually evaporate. Here's how.
The observable Universe is 92 billion light-years in diameter. These pictures put just how large that is in perspective.
Astronomers in 2017 caught an image of a supermassive black hole in a galaxy far, far away. Doing it in our own galaxy is a huge milestone.
After years of analysis, the Event Horizon Telescope team has finally revealed what the Milky Way's central black hole looks like.
To understand the edges of our universe, we’ll need to explore the edges of our own philosophies.
John Templeton Foundation
The odds are slim, but the consequences would be devastating. Here's what would happen, plus how to avoid it.