Scientists believe an unusual LIGO detection may be evidence of a primordial black hole, potentially linking these long-theorized objects to the mystery of dark matter. Scientists at the University of Miami believe they may be closing in on evidence for one of the most elusive objects in the universe: primordial black holes. While definitive proof [...]
After a 50-year search, astronomers have uncovered evidence that Sagittarius A* -- the 4.3-million-solar-mass black hole that resides at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy -- is blowing a hot cosmic wind into its surroundings, carving out a giant cavity near the Galaxyβs heart.
Magnetic fields may be the hidden force bringing both newborn stars and giant black holes together. New computer simulations suggest that magnetic fields play a crucial role in helping pairs of young stars form. The findings could explain why binary star systems are so common throughout the Milky Way and may even offer clues about [...]
A distant quasar has revealed one of the most extreme ultraviolet outflows ever observed, providing new clues about the powerful interactions between supermassive black holes and their host galaxies. A supermassive black hole more than a billion times the mass of the Sun is blasting gas through space at such extraordinary speeds that astronomers are [...]
A supermassive black hole 6 billion times the mass of the Sun lurks in MRG-M0138, a gravitationally lensed quiescent galaxy seen when the Universe was just 3 billion years old, according to an analysis of data collected by the NIRSpec Integral Field Spectrograph onboard the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope.
Researchers discovered a closely orbiting pair of supermassive black holes in Markarian 501 by tracking two jets of particles. The binary system could merge within 100 years and may produce detectable gravitational waves. Current evidence indicates that nearly every large galaxy contains a supermassive black hole at its center, with a mass ranging from millions [...]
Should you be concerned about the possibility of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN creating enough antimatter to blow up the Earth? Or the whole Universe?
A new theoretical study suggests that black holes may never completely disappear, potentially offering a way to resolve the long-standing black hole information paradox. One of the biggest unsolved problems in modern physics, known as the βblack hole information paradox,β may finally have a compelling solution. The proposed answer could also help explain where the [...]
A newly-released Hubble image shows Messier 88, a black hole-powered spiral galaxy that is gradually plunging toward the crowded heart of the Virgo Cluster.
Astronomers using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope have found an enormous black hole in the early Universe that appears to predate its own host galaxy, raising fresh questions about how the cosmosβ first supermassive monsters were born.
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) was designed to give us the ability to look at one of the earliest periods in the evolution of the Universe, a time when some of the earliest stars were putting out enough light to ionize the hydrogen that accounted for almost all of the normal matter present at the time. There were lots of ideas about what we might see, but the Universe is full of surprises.
One of the first surprises was the existence of what picked up the moniker "little red dots," which are exactly what their name suggests. After some initial arguments, it became clear that these were early versions of the supermassive black holes that presently sit at the center of almost every galaxy. Now, gravitational lensing has allowed astronomers to confirm that a little red dot is little more than a supermassive black hole without much in the way of a galaxy around it.
Making a little red dot bigger
The little red dot in question is called Abell 2744βQSO1, and gravitational lensing has both magnified it and caused it to appear three times in the vicinity of the galaxy cluster that did the lensing. Based on details in its spectrum, we're looking at the object as it appeared just 700 million years after the Big Bang.