Black Holes

Trolling the Monster in the Heart of the Milky Way

Something very large and dark occupies the center of our galaxy, and new data suggest that it is indeed a black hole.

The New York Times

Black Holes and Soft Hair: Why Stephen Hawking’s Final Work Is Important

Malcolm Perry, who worked with Stephen Hawking on his final paper, explains how it improves our understanding of one of the universe’s enduring mysteries.

The Guardian

How Do You Take a Picture of a Black Hole? With a Telescope as Big as the Earth

A planet-spanning virtual observatory, years in the making, could change how we think about space, time, and the nature of reality. Will it work?

The New York Times Magazine

Could the Earth Be Swallowed by a Black Hole?

Fabio Pacucci examines the probability of Earth being gobbled up by a black hole.

TED-Ed

Milky Way’s Black Hole Provides Long-Sought Test of Einstein’s General Relativity

An observation decades in the making confirms predictions about how light behaves in an immense gravitational field.

Nature

Dark Side of the Universe

An interview series that explores dark matter, dark energy, and more.

Closer To Truth

Neutrinos Linked With Cosmic Source for the First Time

High-energy neutrinos have been traced back to a flaring supermassive black hole known as a blazar. The long-sought link opens the door to an entirely new way to study the universe.

Quanta Magazine

Harvard, MIT Scientists Propose New Method to Measure Universe’s Expansion

Scientists from Harvard and MIT could have the key to discovering how the universe began and whether it will continue expanding or eventually collapse.

The Boston Globe

Gravitational Waves Hold Key to Knowing How Fast the Universe Is Expanding

Two physicists propose using rare pairs of black holes and neutron stars to nail down a more precise Hubble constant.

Inverse

Shedding New Light on Black Holes

Black holes may hold the key to understanding the most fundamental truths of the universe, but how do you see something that’s, well, black? Astronomers think they have the answer.

World Science Festival

Telescope Aimed at Black Hole Gives Taste of Incredible Results to Come

The Event Horizon Telescope is a network of typically around 10 telescopes all trying to take a picture of Sagittarius A*.

Gizmodo

Maybe We Could “See” a Singularity After All

When black holes collide, interactions between their cores might leave an imprint on the resulting gravitational waves.

Scientific American

Fuzzballs v. Black Holes

A radical theory replaces the cosmic crunchers with fuzzy quantum spheres, potentially solving the black-hole information paradox and explaining away the big bang and the origin of time.

FQXi

Black Holes Aren’t Totally Black, and Other Insights From Stephen Hawking’s Groundbreaking Work

The famous cosmologist was closely identified with black holes due to his revolutionary theoretical work explaining some of their mysterious properties.

The Conversation

Physicists Find a Way to See the ‘Grin’ of Quantum Gravity

A recently proposed experiment would confirm that gravity is a quantum force.

Quanta Magazine

Dead Stars Orbiting Black Holes May Explain Mysterious Fast Radio Bursts

Scientists are peering into the “engines” behind some of the most extreme outbursts in the universe.

Scientific American

Supermassive Black Holes Stop Galaxies From Making New Stars

The bigger the black hole, the faster their host galaxies get “quenched,” according to new research.

The Atlantic

The Most Distant Supermassive Black Hole Ever Found Holds Secrets to the Early Universe

We’re seeing how it looked when the universe was a toddler.

The Verge

Gravitational Waves Could Help Scientists Solve A Major Black Hole Mystery

Astrophysicists at Brown University and Harvard University who study gravitational waves say these ripples in the fabric of space and time could help them investigate the possible existence of a very specific kind of black hole, one that hypothetically formed right after the big bang.

Inverse

New Gravitational Wave Detection From Colliding Black Holes

In another step forward for the rapidly expanding universe of invisible astronomy, scientists said they had recorded the space-time reverberations known as gravitational waves from the collision of a pair of black holes 1.8 billion light years away from here.

The New York Times

Extraterrestrial Contact and Black Holes

A discussion about the most recent evidence of extraterrestrial life with Avi Loeb, chair of Harvard’s Department of Astronomy.

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