Astronomical black holes are compact astrophysical systems characterized by regions of spacetime where gravity is so strong that no matter or radiation can escape beyond the event horizon. They are described by solutions to Einstein’s field equations, typically approximated by the Kerr or Schwarzschild metrics, and are defined by mass, spin, and (negligible) charge. Formed primarily via stellar core collapse or hierarchical mergers, they interact with their environments through accretion disks, relativistic jets, and gravitational-wave emission. Astronomical black holes span stellar-mass to supermassive regimes, influencing galactic dynamics, high-energy radiation processes, and cosmological structure formation.
The X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM) has revealed an unexpected difference between the powerful winds launching from a disk around a neutron star and those from material circling supermassive black holes.
Astronomy
Sep 17, 2025
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The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration, with a substantial contribution from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR), has unveiled new, detailed images of the supermassive black hole at the center of ...
Astronomy
Sep 16, 2025
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On September 14, 2015, a signal arrived on Earth, carrying information about a pair of remote black holes that had spiraled together and merged. The signal had traveled about 1.3 billion years to reach us at the speed of ...
Astronomy
Sep 14, 2025
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Ten years after scientists first detected gravitational waves emerging from two colliding black holes, the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA collaboration, a research team that includes Columbia astronomy professor Maximiliano Isi, has recorded ...
General Physics
Sep 13, 2025
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Tiny red objects spotted by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) are offering scientists new insights into the origins of galaxies in the universe—and may represent an entirely new class of celestial object: a black hole ...
Astronomy
Sep 12, 2025
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Physicists have long believed that black holes explode at the end of their lives, and that such explosions happen—at most—only once every 100,000 years. But new research published in Physical Review Letters by physicists ...
Astronomy
Sep 10, 2025
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A team of astronomers have observed an explosion in the universe unlike any ever witnessed before. The gamma-ray bursts from outside the Milky Way galaxy repeated several times over the course of a day. Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) ...
Astronomy
Sep 9, 2025
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Astronomers have discovered "dust-shrouded supermassive black holes" in the early universe, less than 1 billion years after the Big Bang—a type of object that had previously escaped detection.
Astronomy
Sep 9, 2025
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A team of researchers led by the Instituto Galego de Física de Altas Enerxías (IGFAE) from the University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain) has measured for the first time the speed and direction of the recoil of a newborn ...
Astronomy
Sep 9, 2025
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LIGO, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory, has been called the most precise ruler in the world for its ability to measure motions more than 10,000 times smaller than the width of a proton. By making these ...
Astronomy
Sep 4, 2025
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