supermassive black hole

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

"It's not just a rare chance event. There has to be a mechanism to form them," study author Anna Ciurlo told "Newsweek."

Researchers say that the object is moving around ten times faster than most stars in the galaxy.

Images from the James Webb Space Telescope will be the highest quality ever obtained, researchers say.

Researchers estimate that the explosion lasted for approximately 300,000 years.

"We have never seen anything like this in the 24 years we have studied the supermassive black hole," researcher Andrea Ghez said.

The two balloon-like structures stretch hundreds of light-years and are thought to have formed in a violent eruption seven million years ago.

Scientists are now trying to work out what caused the mystery burst .

Scientists found the enormous black hole after spotting an "unusual" object at the core of a bright galaxy cluster about 700 million light years from Earth.

The black hole is located at the center of the spiral galaxy NGC 3147 around 130 million light-years away from Earth.

Astronomers have measured the spin rate of five, distant supermassive black holes for a study published in the Astrophysical Journal.

Computer simulations points to a new theory on how the universe's first giant black holes came to be—and soon scientists will be able to test it for real.

The galaxy belongs to a recently discovered, rare and unusual class of stellar systems known as ultracompact dwarfs.

The theory of general relativity, which describes the nature of gravity, revolutionized science after its publication in 1915.

The image reveals in incredible detail a fiery region surrounding the supermassive black hole that lies at the heart of the Milky Way.

The incredible discovery will help astronomers unlock the secrets of the universe's very first galaxies.

"It was surprising, but you like to be surprised in science."

The behemoth gobbles up the equivalent of our sun's mass every two days.

Competing winds from black holes and stars wrestle to give this galaxy its strange butterfly shape.

The planets face supernovas, gamma-ray bursts and gravity-disrupting stars in the crowded center of the Milky Way.

The gassy giant has big implications for physics.

Unfortunately for black holes, we can still take pictures.

"Growing black holes behave like babies that become too energetic and throw their food off the table once they eat enough."

"This is remarkable that the supermassive black hole is able to impact stars forming at such large distances."

How do you take a picture of a giant and invisible object?

The incredible discovery is helping scientists define our understanding of how black holes grow.

The black holes were the closest orbiting pair ever discovered.

Object found hiding in a cloud of molecular gas believed to be an elusive type of black hole.

Scientists' observations could help us understand what could happen to our own galaxy in the future.