Educational Science

Time moved '5 times slower' in the early universe, mind-bending black hole study reveals

Astronomers have peered back to the dawn of the cosmos to observe time ticking five times more slowly in the early universe than it does now — finally proving a prediction that Albert Einstein made more than a century ago. Researchers spotted the extreme slow-motion effect in data taken from...

Strange 'echo' from the Milky Way's central black hole reveals it briefly awoke 200 years ago

A mysterious echo from the center of our galaxy's supermassive black hole has revealed that, some 200 years ago, the sleeping monster briefly woke up. Located 26,000 light-years away, the black hole, called Sagittarius A*, is a gargantuan tear in space-time that is 4 million times the mass of the...

Up to half of the black holes that devour stars burp up their stellar remains years later. Astronomers made the discovery after spending years watching black holes involved in tidal disruption events (TDEs). TDEs occur when stars venture too close to black holes. These cosmic monsters' immense gravity exerts incredible...

A black hole 'assassin' ripped a star to shreds and left its guts strewn about the galaxy

In a way, stars are like doughnuts: You have to rip them apart to see what's inside. Luckily for astronomers, sometimes the cosmos does just that — when a black hole shreds a star that passes by too closely in a violent spectacle called a tidal disruption event (TDE). (The...

'Twisty' new theory of gravity says information can escape black holes after all

In astrophysics, there's a saying that black holes have no hair. This means that, in the theory of general relativity, black holes are exceptionally simplistic objects. All you need to describe a black hole is its mass, its electric charge and its spin rate. With those three numbers alone, you...

Could a black hole devour the universe?

Black holes are infamous for their immense gravity — they can swallow stars, planets and even other black holes. But could a black hole consume the entire universe, piece by piece? In short, no. There's no way that a black hole could eat the universe, or even an entire galaxy,...

For the 1st time, scientists accidentally measure the swirling ring around a black hole

For the first time ever, scientists have measured the exact size of the disk of matter swirling around a supermassive black hole. The serendipitous finding could help expand our knowledge of how these cosmic juggernauts grow and how the galaxies that surround them evolve over time. Accretion disks are massive...

Supermassive black hole found spitting a giant, high-energy jet toward Earth

A NASA mission has observed a supermassive black hole pointing its highly energetic jet straight toward Earth. Don't panic just yet, though. As fearsome as this cosmic event is, it's located at a very safe distance of about 400 million light-years away. Actively feeding supermassive black holes, including the one...

James Webb telescope discovers the oldest active black hole in the known universe

Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have detected the most distant, actively-feeding supermassive black hole ever observed. The black hole also happens to be one of the least massive seen in the early universe — measuring the equivalent of about 9 million suns — which is proving challenging...

Gargantuan black hole 'switches on,' becoming one of the brightest objects ever seen

Scientists scouring the cosmos for signs of a rare explosion may have stumbled upon something even more remarkable: a gargantuan black hole switching on in the early universe, going from dim to tremendously bright in a cosmic blink of an eye. The black hole, dubbed J221951, is estimated to sit...