Black holes

The method could help astronomers hunt for black holes much closer to home.

The growth of massive merging black holes with masses over 40 times that of the sun could be linked with the accelerating expansion of the Universe in a "cosmological coupling."

Researchers may now understand how the supermassive black hole at the heart of M87 launches a jet of plasma spreading across thousands of light-years.

The material that billows out from feeding supermassive black holes stretches for thousands of light-years "impacting anything that stands in their way."

Active galaxies blast out powerful jets that when pointed straight at Earth are called blazars, the main sources of gamma-ray in the universe.

Research has indicated that there is a hidden population of massive neutron stars lurking in our galaxy yet to be found.

Scientists found the elusive black hole with a mass 10,000 times that of the Sun after it gave off the powerful X-ray flare.

Professor Xavier Calmet of the University of Sussex told Newsweek the findings ould mean black holes are "much more complicated and interesting than naively imagined."

Astronomers have witnessed signs of a rare cosmic event for the first time, a black hole being swallowed by a star and eating its way out.

Using NASA's Chandra X-ray telescope, researchers have observed two supermassive black holes that existed when the Universe was just 2 billion years old.

Most massive galaxies are thought to have a black hole settled in right in their centre—but some are cast adrift.

"We had never seen anything like it before, and we had no idea what they were," said astrophysicist Ray Norris.

Scientists have detected gravitational waves—ripples in the fabric of spacetime—from a collision between black holes and neutron stars for the first time.

The black hole, located inside the Milky Way galaxy, is also among the smallest known to science.

An expert tells Newsweek about how long it takes these cosmic behemoths to die, why they're here, and what we're trying to figure out about them.

"We're seeing two supermassive black holes, a larger one with 200 million solar masses [more than the sun] and a smaller companion weighing half as much," the NASA astrophysicist said.

Some black holes are truly monstrous in size, but even a small one on Earth would be enough to end life as we know it.

Scientists spotted the star being ripped apart by a black hole millions of light-years from Earth.

We detected a very unusual signal, it was more like a bang. The signal was at such a low frequency that we knew that if it were a binary black hole, it must be really massive.

"This all-sky image completely changes the way we look at the energetic universe," said researcher Peter Predehl.

"The flash was so powerful that it lit up the stream like a Christmas tree," said researcher Andrew Fox.

The black hole forms part of a triple star system known as HR 6819, which can be seen without binoculars or telescopes from the southern hemisphere on a dark, clear night.

Observations from NASA's Hubble telescope show these outflows contain, on average, 10 times more energy than previously thought.

"We've seen outbursts in the centers of galaxies before, but this one is really, really massive," researcher Melanie Johnston-Hollitt said.

"Up until now, such a concentration of three supermassive black holes had never been discovered in the universe," Peter Weilbacher, from the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam, said.

A typical gamma ray burst lasting seconds or minutes produces about the same energy as our sun does over the course of its entire multi-billion-year lifecycle.

Black holes are dead stars that, after exploding as supernovae, have so much mass that nothing can hold them together, causing them to collapse into a singularity.

Five years ago scientists proposed the hypothetical existence of a large world tens of millions of miles from the Sun, which has come to be known as "Planet Nine."

"Simulations and movies like these really help us visualize what Einstein meant when he said that gravity warps the fabric of space and time," the creator of the images said.

The star, named J0740+6620, has a mass more than two times that of our sun, but is just 18 miles wide.