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Black Holes
A peculiar object dubbed an 'X-ray dot' could help solve the mystery of the 'little red dots' discovered by the James Webb Space Telescope.
For the first time, scientists have measured the instantaneous mind-blowing power of jets blasting from a black hole.
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Powerful bright blue cosmic explosions called Luminous Fast Blue Optical Transients could be caused when a black hole or neutron star slams into the universe's hottest class of star.
Black holes evaporate through Hawking radiation, meaning their days are numbered. But a new study finds they could enter a metastable stage where they look similar to white holes.
A link between particle physics and gravity equations, called the double copy, applies to Hawking radiation, creating a new way into black hole puzzles.
The Universe’s biggest black holes may not be born giants after all. Scientists analyzing gravitational-wave signals from dozens of black hole collisions found evidence that the heaviest black holes are likely “cosmic recyclers” — formed through repeated smashups inside incredibly crowded star clusters. These violent chain reactions appear to create a distinct class of rapidly spinning black holes that stand apart from ordinary ones formed by dying stars.
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Merging black holes and neutron stars have unusual oval orbits prior to colliding and merging, which challenge the laws of physics.
The most massive black holes in the universe detected by the ripples they make in spacetime were not born directly from collapsing stars, according to a new study. These cosmic giants instead build up through a series of repeated and extremely violent collision events in very densely populated star clusters, an international team of researchers argue.
New Curtin University-led research has used a radio telescope that spans the Earth to snap images that measure the immense power of jets from black holes, confirming scientists’ theories of how black holes help shape the structure of the Universe.
An international team of researchers has measured the power of jets of particles blasted into space by black
Author(s): John R. V. Crump, Maxime Gadioux, Harvey S. Reall, and Jorge E. SantosThe violation of the third law of black hole mechanics in higher dimensional vacuum gravity is numerically demonstrated. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 171405] Published Fri May 01, 2026
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One of the most intriguing puzzles in cosmology is the existence of supermassive black holes that seem to appear very early in the history of the Universe. Astronomers keep finding them at times when, by all that they understand about the infant Universe, they shouldn't be there. The standard theory of black hole formation suggests that they shouldn't have had enough time to grow as massive as they appear to be. Yet, there they are, monster black holes with the mass of at least a billion suns. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has found a large population of them in early epochs, and they've been observed in very early quasars as well.
Finding X-rays coming from one of the little red dots discovered by the James Webb Space Telescope could be the key to answering what these weird objects truly are.
"We really think it's our best season yet."
Stars in this range may form a long-predicted type of supernova instead The post Evidence for a ‘forbidden range’ of black hole masses emerges in gravitational wave observations appeared first on Physics World.
Two University of Miami astrophysicists believe a recent unusual signal detected by a powerful ground-based observatory could provide
An international team of researchers – including experts at the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (CITA) in the
"With the James Webb Space Telescope now revealing more supermassive black holes in the early universe, this mechanism may help bridge the gap between theory and observation."
New research clarifies what happens when a star wanders too close to a supermassive black hole and is torn apart.
A growing mystery in astronomy is the presence of gargantuan black holes — some weighing as much as
Subatomic black holes from ancient cosmic history could, in principle, make you have a very bad day. But chances are you’ll never encounter one
New observations and simulations by a team of researchers led by MPE reveal that a massive binary star near our galaxy's center is responsible for creating a series of enigmatic gas clouds—compact gas clumps that help feed the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A*. The study is published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
An international team led by Monash University has uncovered evidence of a rare form of exploding star, helping to shed light on one of the most cataclysmic events in the universe. At the end of their lives, most massive stars collapse into black holes—objects with gravity so strong that not even light can escape. But some are completely destroyed in pair-instability supernova explosions. This can explain the so-named "Forbidden Gap" in black hole masses.
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Astronomers have discovered that jets from a cannibalistic black hole are erupting with the power of 10,000 suns.
Researchers from Bar-Ilan University have successfully recreated key features of black hole physics in a laboratory setting using an innovative optical system that mimics how black holes behave after violent cosmic events such as collisions or mergers.
Scientists have captured stunning new insights into one of the universe’s most powerful phenomena—black hole jets—by using a planet-sized network of radio telescopes. Focusing on Cygnus X-1, one of the first known black holes, they measured jets blasting out with the energy of 10,000 Suns and moving at half the speed of light. By watching these jets get pushed and bent by the fierce stellar winds of a nearby supergiant star, researchers could calculate their true power for the first time.
Current findings suggest that there is a supermassive black hole at the centre of almost every large galaxy,
In 2014, a strange cloudy object called G2 made a close approach to Sagittarius A*, (Sag A*) the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way Galaxy. Astronomers were pretty excited, partly because they thought it might get torn apart by Sag A*'s intense gravitational pull. That didn't happen, and the event was a cosmic fizzle. Instead, G2 skipped around the black hole. Various observations showed that it wasn't just a gas cloud. It was likely a dusty protostellar object encased in a dusty cloud. Or perhaps several merged stars. But, it survived the flyby and continued on a shortened orbit.
"Our study suggests that decaying dark matter could profoundly reshape the evolution of the first stars and galaxies..."
The launch of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) in 2021 pushed the horizon of seeing the early universe, unveiling cosmic events just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang. Among the most striking discoveries are supermassive black holes—some reaching 100 million times the mass of our sun.
In a galaxy 500 million light-years away, two supermassive black holes could merge, spreading gravitational waves across the universe.
For the first time, scientists have measured the instantaneous mind-blowing power of jets blasting from a black hole. The jet power from this relatively close black hole-star system is equivalent to 10,000 suns, an international research team reported on Thursday. They also tracked the jet speed: roughly 540 million km/h (355 million mph) – half the speed of light. Located 7,200 light-years away, Cygnus X-1 features not only a black hole – the first one ever identified more than a half-century...
A first-of-its-kind observation shows how jets from voracious black holes can shape the growth of galaxies
New Curtin University-led research has used a radio telescope that spans Earth to snap images that measure the immense power of jets from black holes, confirming scientists' theories of how black holes help shape the structure of the universe.
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Astronomers have accurately measured the "dancing" energy jets of the first confirmed black hole, Cygnus X-1, more than 60 years after it was first spotted.
Stephen Hawking's theory of black hole evaporation clashes with the laws of quantum mechanics. A new paper finds a way around this paradox, provided that the universe has seven dimensions.
Author(s): Danat Issa, Beverly Lowell, Jonatan Jacquemin-Ide, Matthew Liska, and Alexander TchekhovskoyLaunching jets from collapsar black holes requires strong magnetic field and rapid rotation. However, strong fields can spin down the collapsar black holes before the jet can be launched. In this work, the authors study the effect of neutrino cooling on this jet launching process. They show that neutrino cooled disks can continue to feed angular momentum to the black hole without the opposing spin-down effect that comes from general mass accretion. Thus, the spin of the black hole remains sufficient high to launch a jet from a collapsar environment to produce a long gamma-ray burst. [Phys. Rev. D 113, 083020] Published Wed Apr 15, 2026
A growing mystery in astronomy is the presence of gargantuan black holes—some weighing as much as a billion suns—existing less than a billion years after the Big Bang. According to the standard theory of black hole formation, these black holes simply should not have had enough time to grow so large. A study led by University of California, Riverside graduate student Yash Aggarwal shows that dark matter decays could be the key to understanding the origin of these cosmic behemoths. Published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, the research shows that the energy released from dark matter decay could alter the chemistry of early galaxies enough to cause some of them to directly collapse into black holes rather than forming stars.
A pair of dwarf galaxies in the giant Virgo Cluster show what can happen when these stellar cities interact. Scientists at the University of Michigan focused the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) onto the galaxies NGC 4486B and UCD736 and found each of them sporting "overmassive" black holes at or near their hearts. Those supermassive black holes comprise a large fraction of each galaxy's mass.
Using observations gathered by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), an international team of astronomers have revealed that one supermassive black hole in the early universe must have formed before a galaxy developed around it. Publishing their results in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, a team led by Roberto Maiolino at the University of Cambridge hope their results could lead to a better understanding of the origins of these immense objects.
Supermassive black holes are among the most enigmatic objects in the universe. They typically weigh millions or even billions of times the mass of the sun and sit at the centers of most large galaxies. At the heart of the Milky Way lies Sagittarius A*, our galaxy's supermassive black hole, with a mass of about four million suns. But these black holes do not emit light, so astronomers can only detect them indirectly through their effects on nearby stars and gas.
New research suggests that relic black holes from before the big bang may still shape galaxies today. These black holes could explain dark matter, one of the biggest unsolved questions in cosmology.
An excerpt from art historian and author Lynn Gamwell’s book Conjuring the Void: the Art of Black Holes The post Lure of the black hole: from science to art appeared first on Physics World.
A colossal “cosmic volcano” has erupted in deep space, as a supermassive black hole in galaxy J1007+3540 roars back to life after nearly 100 million years of silence. Astronomers captured stunning radio images showing fresh jets blasting outward while crashing into the intense pressure of a surrounding galaxy cluster, creating a chaotic, distorted structure stretching nearly a million light-years.
Astronomers analyzing gravitational-wave data from the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Collaboration have reported that merging binary black holes fall into three distinct categories. The study shows that the three subpopulations have their own characteristic masses, spin behavior, and merger rate that may be linked to different dominant formation mechanisms. The paper outlining their results was submitted to the preprint server arXiv on March 18.
Shock waves from tiny black holes in the early universe could explain how antimatter became so rare while matter is common.
Gravitational waves may have provided the first tantalizing evidence of tiny primordial black holes born during the Big Bang, which could account for dark matter.
Learn how shifting jets in galaxy Mrk 501 exposed a pair of orbiting supermassive black holes nearing collision.
A bizarre, record-breaking neutrino detected in 2023 may have originated from an exploding primordial black hole—a relic from the early universe. Scientists suggest these black holes could carry a mysterious “dark charge,” causing rare but powerful bursts of energy that current detectors might occasionally catch. This could explain why only one experiment saw the event. The theory also opens the door to discovering entirely new particles and possibly uncovering the nature of dark matter.
"It is fascinating that an active galactic nucleus can change its brightness so dramatically over such a short period of time."
Supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies are one of the most active fields of research in astronomy. In order to accumulate their enormous masses, they must merge with each other. A research team led by Silke Britzen from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR) in Bonn has found direct evidence of two supermassive black holes in the galaxy Markarian 501, which orbit each other very closely. This could be the first time that a pair has been detected that is about to merge. This provides a unique opportunity to better understand a central process in galaxy evolution.
Astronomers studied 1.3 million galaxies and 8,000 X-ray-spewing supermassive black holes to find out why these gravitational monsters are growing more slowly than ever.
Designed to hunt for new alien worlds, NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has serendipitously observed the rising outburst of a black hole X-ray binary known as AT 2019wey. The observations, which may help us better understand the nature of this system, were presented March 25 on the arXiv pre-print server.
The early universe is absolutely so far outside our understanding of how the world works it's hard to describe in words. Back then, the cosmos wasn't filled with stars and galaxies but with a boiling soup of quarks and gluons, with a few microscopic black holes thrown in, occasionally detonating like depth charges. That's the early universe theorized by a new paper, available in pre-print from arXiv, from researchers at Vrije Universiteit Brussel and MIT anyway.
One of the greatest mysteries of modern physics, the "black hole information paradox," might have finally found an elegant solution, and the answer could also reveal the origins of the mass of fundamental particles.
About 10 billion years ago, the growth rate of supermassive black holes began to slow dramatically. To this day, the SMBH growth rate still appears to be low. There are three potential explanations for this, and researchers think they've figured out which explanation fits best.
An international team led by Monash University has uncovered evidence of a rare form of exploding star, helping to shed light on one of the most cataclysmic events in the universe. At the end of their lives, most massive stars collapse into black holes—objects with gravity so strong that not even light can escape.
Pair instability supernovae create a "mass gap" in black holes.
The early universe is absolutely so far outside our understanding of how the world works it's hard to describe in words. Back then, the cosmos wasn’t filled with stars and galaxies but with a boiling soup of quarks and gluons, with a few microscopic black holes thrown in, occasionally detonating like depth charges. That’s the early universe theorized by a new paper, available in pre-print from arXiv, from researchers at Vrije Universiteit Brussel and MIT anyway.
Author(s): Michael Müller and Reed EssickWeak tidal forces alter the gravitational-wave signal from merging neutron stars by just enough that the telltale signature could be detected in large sensitive surveys. [Phys. Rev. D 113, 064062] Published Tue Mar 31, 2026
Author(s): Charles DayWeak tidal forces alter the gravitational-wave signal from merging neutron stars by just enough that the telltale signature could be detected in large sensitive surveys. [Physics 19, s37] Published Tue Mar 31, 2026
Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb suggests the S251112cm signal may be a black hole moon. Learn how sub-solar mass objects challenge gravitational wave astronomy in 2026.
It's not often that astronomers can observe huge changes in a galaxy's brightness over the course of a few years. Most galaxies change in brightness (and other characteristics) over millions or billions of years. So, when images of the 10-billion-light-year distant galaxy J0218-0036 showed that it dimmed down by a twentieth of its previous brightness in just 20 years, observers were surprised. What could cause it to do that? That's not "normal" for AGN.
A blazing supermassive black hole can influence far more than its own galaxy. Scientists found that quasars emit radiation strong enough to shut down star formation in nearby galaxies millions of light-years away. This could explain why some galaxies near early quasars appear faint or missing. The finding suggests galaxies grow and evolve together, not in isolation.
One of the things astronomers find when they look around at galaxies is a correlation between a galaxy's mass and the mass of its supermassive black hole. Contrary to popular belief, these SMBH don't anchor their galaxies; they make up only a small portion of a galaxy's mass. In local galaxies, the ratio of SMBH mass to galaxy mass is about 0.1%–0.5%.
General relativity stands as one of the bedrock theories in modern physics. Its strange view of relative time and space has been confirmed by countless experimental and observational tests, from rotational frame dragging to the radiation of gravitational waves. But there is reason to believe that it is not the final say on the nature of space and time.
An underwater observatory recently detected a startlingly energetic cosmic neutrino. One possible cause involves a phenomenon that so far exists only in theory.
An underwater observatory recently detected a startlingly energetic cosmic neutrino. One possible cause involves a phenomenon that so far exists only in theory.
Long ago, the cosmos might have been a black hole factory—and these primordial objects are even weirder than you think
An international team led by a researcher at the Chiba Institute of Technology has discovered an extremely rare phenomenon: a galaxy about 10 billion light-years away whose brightness dropped to one-twentieth of its original level in just 20 years. By combining multiwavelength observations with archival data spanning several decades, the researchers concluded that the fading was caused by a rapid decrease in the gas flowing into the supermassive black hole at the galaxy's center. The discovery shows that the activity of supermassive black holes can change dramatically on timescales short enough to be observed within a human lifetime.
The JWST has shown us that supermassive black holes were much larger in the early Universe than we thought. New research has extended this understanding to more intermediate redshifts, and to dwarf galaxies. Could the often-invoked Super-Eddington accretion be responsible?
It may well take years to prove, but a pair of University of Miami astrophysicists could be on the verge of a cosmic breakthrough that will confirm the existence of primordial black holes and the role they play in one of cosmology's greatest mysteries.
Astronomers have an answer for a long-running mystery in astrophysics: why is the growth of supermassive black holes so much lower today than in the past? A study using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and other X-ray telescopes found that supermassive black holes are unable to consume material as rapidly as they did in the distant past. The results appeared in the December 2025 issue of The Astrophysical Journal.
We can now use the gravitational waves of black holes to test general relativity and look for evidence of alternative theories of gravity.
Did primordial black holes born during the Big Bang swallow the universe's antimatter, allowing matter to dominate the cosmos?
Author(s): Lorenzo Ennoggi, Manuela Campanelli, Julian Krolik, Scott C. Noble, Yosef Zlochower, and Maria Chiara de SimoneState of the art numerical simulations predict telltale photon signatures from mergers of supermassive black holes. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 111401] Published Tue Mar 17, 2026
The research could shed light on how black holes vomit out matter and how this influences their home galaxies.
An international team from China and Italy has reported a possible cosmic encore to the landmark 2017 multi-messenger discovery. In November 2024, the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA observatories detected gravitational waves from a binary black hole merger, designated S241125n. Remarkably, just seconds later, satellites recorded a short gamma-ray burst (GRB) from the same region of the sky.
Despite years of debate and follow-up studies, an odd streak of cosmic light still defies a final explanation. Is it a giant black hole screaming through intergalactic space?
Scientists analyzing a gravitational-wave signal have discovered that a neutron star and black hole spiraled together on an oval-shaped orbit just before merging. This unusual motion, detected in the event GW200105, contradicts the long-held expectation that such pairs settle into nearly perfect circles before collision. The eccentric orbit suggests the system likely formed in a chaotic stellar environment with strong gravitational interactions.
Merging black holes and neutron stars have unusual oval orbits prior to colliding and merging, which challenge the laws of physics.
Scientists have uncovered the first robust evidence of a black hole and neutron star crashing together but orbiting in an oval path rather than a perfect circle just before they merged. This discovery challenges long-standing assumptions about how these cosmic pairs form and evolve.
Supermassive black hole binaries can be difficult to detect in many galaxies, but a new approach could find them by looking for the regular flashes of starlight caused by the gravitational lensing of these black holes.
The catastrophic collision of a black hole and a neutron star sent ripples across the universe. New analysis of those ripples could upend a major theory about how these extreme pairs form.