hole

A New Study Calculates The Number of Black Holes in The Universe. It’s a Lot

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Because we can’t see black holes, it’s hard to know exactly how many are out there in the big, wide Universe. But that doesn’t mean we have no means of trying to figure it out. Stellar-mass black holes are the collapsed cores of dead massive stars, and new research incorporating how these stars and binaries … Read more

Striking satellite photo captures Mount Vesuvius peering through a hole in the clouds

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In this image captured Jan. 2 by the Landsat 8 satellite Mount Vesuvius is clearly visible through a circular hole in the clouds. (Image credit: Joshua Stevens/Landsat/NASA Earth Observatory) One of the world’s most dangerous volcanoes, Mount Vesuvius, appears to “peer up” into the sky through an eerily circular hole in the clouds in this … Read more

The Milky Way’s supermassive black hole is leaking gas

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A composite image of the effects of our Milky Way galaxy’s monster black hole. (Image credit: NASA, ESA, and Gerald Cecil (UNC-Chapel Hill); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)) The supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy is leaking. The Milky Way’s central black hole, known as Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), has … Read more

‘Mini’ monster black hole discovered hiding in a dwarf galaxy

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The dwarf galaxy Mrk 462. (Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Dartmouth Coll./J. Parker & R. Hickox; Optical/IR: Pan-STARRS) A newly discovered “mini” supermassive black hole could help reveal some of the secrets behind the biggest black holes in the cosmos. Researchers using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory recently discovered a monstrous black hole that was “buried” in dust … Read more

Supermassive black hole gobbled up a star in the 1980s, and high schoolers helped discover it

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Astronomers have found evidence of a black hole snacking on a star in data gathered back in the 1980s, according to new research. The researchers say that they have identified the signature of such an event in data gathered during the 1980s, thanks to a pair of high school interns from Massachusetts. When a star … Read more

Newly Discovered ‘Mini’ Supermassive Black Hole Is Among The Smallest Ever Found

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Because they emit nothing we can detect, there are many things about black holes we simply do not know. Amongst the most perplexing are supermassive black holes, millions to billions of times the mass of our Sun. Since black holes form from the cores of massive dead individual stars, how do supermassive behemoths grow so … Read more

Astronomers See Black Hole Jets Blaze 16x Wider Than The Full Moon in Our Sky

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Astronomers have captured a breathtaking radio wave image, showing our closest radio active black hole spewing out massive jets of plasma that span more than 16 times the size of the full moon in our sky.   The supermassive black hole in question is located in the center of the galaxy Centaurus A around 12 … Read more

This record-breaking black hole eruption could cover 16 full moons in the sky

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Astronomers have produced a detailed image of a massive eruption from the nearest feeding supermassive black hole that spans the size of 16 full moons in the sky. The image, capturing radio emissions of material ejected by the black hole at nearly the speed of light, shows gigantic lobes of plasma spreading more than a … Read more

Ozone hole: One of the longest-lived on record is about to close

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By Adam Vaughan The ozone layer in late November 2021 Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service, ECMWF One of the longest ozone holes on record is expected to close this Wednesday after several weeks of exposing wildlife and people in Antarctica to very high levels of ultraviolet radiation.  The Montreal Protocol’s ban on the CFC gases causing … Read more