Astronomers find cosmic golden needle buried for two decades

Determined to find a needle in a cosmic haystack, a pair of astronomers time traveled through archives of old data from W. M. Keck Observatory on Mauankea in Hawaii and old X-ray data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory ...

MAXI J1820+070: Black hole outburst caught on video

Astronomers have caught a black hole hurling hot material into space at close to the speed of light. This flare-up was captured in a new movie from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory.

Hubble finds best evidence for elusive mid-sized black hole

Astronomers have found the best evidence for the perpetrator of a cosmic homicide: a black hole of an elusive class known as "intermediate-mass," which betrayed its existence by tearing apart a wayward star that passed too ...

Chandra data tests 'theory of everything'

One of the biggest ideas in physics is the possibility that all known forces, particles, and interactions can be connected in one framework. String theory is arguably the best-known proposal for a "theory of everything" that ...

Black holes eat stars in variable mood lighting

When a black hole chews up a star, it produces visible light or X-rays, but astronomers have almost never detected both types of radiation. Astronomer Peter Jonker (SRON / Radboud University) and his colleagues have now spotted ...

How did supermassive black holes grow so fast?

Black holes in the early universe pose a bit of a problem. Based on observations from telescopes on Earth and in space, we know that some black holes grew to be a billion times the mass of the sun just one billion years after ...

Black hole nurtures baby stars a million light years away

Black holes are famous for ripping objects apart, including stars. But now, astronomers have uncovered a black hole that may have sparked the births of stars over a mind-boggling distance, and across multiple galaxies.

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