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Paul M. Sutter is an astrophysicist at SUNY Stony Brook and the Flatiron Institute, host of “Ask a Spaceman” and “Space Radio,” and author of “How to Die in Space.” Sutter contributed this article to Space.com’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. One big reason black holes are feared is that once you go in, you can’t … Read more
Only a handful of supermassive black holes have been confirmed by scientists, but the universe could be filled with billions of these gravitational giants. Theoretically, if you compress a sufficient amount of matter into a small enough space, it will create such a powerful gravitational field that nothing — not even light — can escape … Read more
Take three black holes and throw them into the disk surrounding a supermassive black hole and things get really weird, really fast.
Fluctuating light from a black hole, observed over 15 years, has revealed more about the way these enigmatic objects feed. First, a structure called a corona forms around the outside of the event horizon. Then, powerful jets of plasma launch from the poles, punching material from the corona out into interstellar space at speeds close … Read more
Two huge black holes are locked together by gravity as they inevitably spiral towards a collision, researchers have found in a new study. Researchers in a new study have spotted two supermassive black holes that whip around each other every two Earth years, on average, with respective masses each of hundreds of millions of times … Read more
This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Space.com’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Can black holes become white holes? – Remy, age 9, Wangaratta, Victoria Hi Remy! Thank you for this great question. The short answer, unfortunately, is no. White holes are really just something scientists have imagined — they could exist, but … Read more
Black holes could make a strong case for being the most fascinating phenomena in the whole Universe, and scientists are constantly discovering more about the way that they work and behave – including how they’re created in the first place. Now, a new study of an unusually misaligned one some 10,000 light-years away from … Read more
A dance of death is taking place at the heart of a galaxy in the distant Universe. Some 10 billion light-years away, two supermassive black holes are locked in an orbit so tight that they will collide with each other and form one much larger black hole in the relatively short time of just 10,000 … Read more
White holes are theoretical cosmic regions that function in the opposite way to black holes. Just as nothing can escape a black hole, nothing can enter a white hole. White holes were long thought to be a figment of general relativity born from the same equations as their collapsed star brethren, black holes. More recently, … Read more
What happens inside a black hole — and how does whatever goes on inside relate to the universe outside it? It’s a mystery that has evaded scientists for decades. It’s also a mystery that could also redefine how we think about the nature of the universe. In a paper published in the journal PRX Quantum … Read more