Tag Archive for 'Black hole'

An artist’s impression of a gas cloud swirling around a black hole. Image credit: NAOJ.

ALMA Finds Wandering Intermediate-Mass Black Hole in Milky Way’s Central Region

Mar 1, 2019 by News Staff

Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have spotted streams of molecular gas orbiting around an invisible gravitational...

In this illustration, MAXI J1820+070 pulls material off a neighboring star and into an accretion disk; above the disk is a region of subatomic particles called the corona. Image credit: Aurore Simonnet / NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

NICER Observes ‘X-Ray Echoes’ of Nearby Stellar-Mass Black Hole

Feb 1, 2019 by News Staff

Astrophysicists using NASA’s Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) have detected X-rays from a stellar-mass black hole called MAXI J1820+070...

A 30,000 light-year region from the Renaissance Simulation centered on a cluster of young galaxies that generate radiation (white) and metals (green) while heating the surrounding gas. A dark matter halo just outside this heated region forms three supermassive stars (inset) each over 1,000 times the mass of our Sun that will quickly collapse into massive black holes and eventually supermassive black holes over billions of years. Image credit: Advanced Visualization Lab, National Center for Supercomputing Applications.

Early Universe’s Massive Black Holes Born in Rapidly-Growing Dark Matter Halos: Study

Jan 28, 2019 by News Staff

When the Universe was less than 1 billion years old, some of its stars turned into supermassive black holes. A key mystery in astronomy has been: why are...

Photons emitted near rotating black holes encode quantum information that can be measured by actual quantum information technology. Image credit: Sci-News.com.

Spacetime Geometry near Rotating Black Holes Acts Like Quantum Computer, Physicist Says

Jan 15, 2019 by News Staff

According to a theoretical paper published in the Annals of Physics, by Dr. Ovidiu Racorean from the General Direction of Information Technology in Bucharest,...

An artist’s rendering of the corona around a black hole. Image credit: RIKEN.

Supermassive Black Holes Have Weaker Coronal Magnetic Field Than Expected

Dec 31, 2018 by Enrico de Lazaro

Supermassive black holes that lurk at the center of most galaxies are surrounded by coronas — mysterious features that are sources of highly energetic...

An artist’s depiction of loop quantum gravity effects in a black hole. The bottom half of the image depicts the black hole which, according to general relativity, traps everything including light. Loop quantum gravity overcomes this tremendous pull and liberates everything shown in the top half of image, thus solving the fundamental problem of black hole singularity. Image credit: A. Corichi & J.P. Ruiz.

Loop Quantum Gravity Theory Could Answer Fundamental Questions about Black Holes

Dec 26, 2018 by News Staff

Loop quantum gravity is a theory that uses quantum mechanics to extend gravitational physics beyond Einstein’s theory of general relativity. Previous...

The collision of two black holes is seen in this still from a computer simulation. Image credit: SXS.

Physicists Detect Four New Gravitational Waves

Dec 4, 2018 by News Staff

The twin LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) detectors, located in Livingston, Louisiana, and Hanford, Washington, and the Virgo...

Images of four colliding galaxies, along with close-up views of their coalescing nuclei in the bright cores, are shown beneath the Hubble snapshots of NGC 6240. The left image of each pair, showing the merging galaxies, was taken by the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS). The right image, showing the bright cores, was taken in near-infrared light by the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii, using adaptive optics to sharpen the view. The nuclei in each of the Hubble and Keck Observatory infrared photos are only about 3,000 light-years apart -- a near-embrace in cosmic terms. If there are pairs of black holes, they will likely merge within the next 10 million years to form a more massive black hole. These observations are part of the largest-ever survey of the cores of nearby galaxies using high-resolution images in near-infrared light taken by the Hubble and Keck observatories. Image credit: NASA / ESA / M. Koss, Eureka Scientific, Inc / W. M. Keck Observatory / Pan-STARRS.

Astronomers Find Supermassive Black Hole Pairs in Colliding Galaxies

Nov 9, 2018 by News Staff

A team of astronomers led by Michael Koss of Eureka Scientific Inc. has observed several pairs of galaxies in the final stages of merging together into...

This image shows the Seyfert galaxy PG1211+143. Image credit: Centre de Données astronomiques de Strasbourg / SIMBAD / SDSS.

Astronomers Detect Matter Falling into Black Hole

Sep 25, 2018 by News Staff

University of Leicester’s Professor Ken Pounds and co-authors report the detection of matter falling into a black hole at 30% of the speed of light. This...

New data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory reveal the presence of very bright X-ray sources, most likely binary systems powered by either a stellar-mass black hole or neutron star, in the remarkable ring of the galaxy AM 0644-741. In this composite image, X-rays from Chandra (purple) have been combined with optical data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope (red, green, and blue). Image credit: X-ray – NASA / CXC / INAF / A. Wolter et al; optical – NASA / STScI.

Chandra X-ray Observatory Discovers Ring of Dense Compact Objects in Distant Galaxy

Sep 7, 2018 by News Staff

A remarkable ring of bright X-ray sources — black holes or neutron stars — has been discovered in a galaxy approximately 300 million light...

This Hubble image shows the spiral galaxy Messier 83. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble Heritage Team / STScI / AURA / W. Blair, STScI & JHU / Carnegie Institution of Washington / Las Campanas Observatory / NOAO.

Astronomers Find New Place to Look for Gravitational Waves: Outskirts of Spiral Galaxies

Jul 31, 2018 by News Staff

Conditions favorable for gravitational wave-emitting mergers of massive black holes exist in the outer gas disks of big spiral galaxies, according to a...

Einstein’s General Relativity Passes Black Hole Test

Jul 27, 2018 by News Staff

At the center of our Milky Way Galaxy lies the 4-million-solar-mass black hole named Sagittarius A*. This gravitational monster is surrounded by a group...

An artist’s impression of an intermediate-mass black hole. Image credit: Sci-News.com.

Astronomers See Best Evidence Yet of Intermediate-Mass Black Hole

Jun 20, 2018 by News Staff

Astronomers know that small black holes — objects ranging from 10 times to 100 times the Sun’s mass — are the remnants of dying stars, and...

This celestial firestorm is the blazing wreckage of a collision between two spiral galaxies NGC 4038 and NGC 4039, which are located about 62 million light-years from Earth. The two galaxies, whose bright yellow cores appear to the lower left and upper right of center, began their fateful confrontation a few hundred million years ago. The pair is nicknamed the Antennae Galaxies because of two long streamers of stars, gas, and dust that extend from the crash site. Wide-field images reveal the elongated ‘antennae’ formed during the initial impact, but this Hubble image concentrates on the heart of the galactic collision. Image credit: NASA / ESA / B. Whitmore, STScI.

Violent Galaxy Collisions Better at Activating Black Holes than Peaceful Mergers, Say Astronomers

Jun 8, 2018 by News Staff

When two galaxies collide, their central supermassive black holes also smash together. But before they do, these galaxies often flicker on, absorbing huge...

The first artist’s illustration shows a key part of the process that created this new black hole, as the two neutron stars spin around each other while merging. The purple material depicts debris from the merger. Image credit: NASA / CXC / M.Weiss.

Recent Gravitational-Wave Event Likely Created Low-Mass Black Hole

Jun 5, 2018 by News Staff

A new study using X-ray data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory indicates that the neutron star merger that became the gravitational wave source,...

This image from the VISTA Hemispheric Survey shows the ultra-luminous quasar SMSS J215728.21-360215.1 (center). Image credit: Wolf et al.

Scientists Find ‘Fastest-Growing’ Supermassive Black Hole Known in Universe

May 16, 2018 by Enrico de Lazaro

A supermassive black hole in the center of the ultra-luminous quasar SMSS J215728.21-360215.1 (J2157-3602 for short) devours a mass equivalent to our Sun...

Artist’s impression of a massive black hole. Image credit: Alain Riazuelo / CC BY-SA 2.5.

Milky Way Galaxy May Have Several ‘Wandering’ Supermassive Black Holes

Apr 25, 2018 by News Staff

In a new study, a team of astronomers from Yale Center for Astronomy & Astrophysics, the University of Washington, Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris,...

NGC 6240. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / STScI-ESA.

Binary Supermassive Black Hole Stops Star Formation in NGC 6240

Apr 19, 2018 by News Staff

NGC 6240 is a pair of merging galaxies approximately 400 million light-years away in the constellation Ophiuchus. It spans 300,000 light-years and has...

A snapshot of a simulation showing a binary black hole formed in the center of a globular cluster. Image credit: Northwestern Visualization / Carl Rodriguez.

Globular Star Clusters May Foster Repeated Merging of Multiple Black Holes

Apr 12, 2018 by News Staff

Stellar-mass black holes that reside in globular clusters — small regions of space, usually at the edges of a galaxy, that are packed with hundreds...

10,000 Stellar-Mass Black Holes Exist in Milky Way’s Central Region, Astronomers Say

Apr 5, 2018 by News Staff

Astronomers using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory have discovered what they believe are 12 stellar-mass black holes gathered around Sagittarius A*,...

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