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.
We have known for several decades that the universe is expanding. Scientists use multiple techniques to measure the present-day expansion rate of the universe, known as the Hubble constant. These methods are internally consistent ...
Astronomy
Feb 24, 2026
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Neutron stars are ultra-dense remnants of massive stars that collapsed after supernova explosions and are made up mostly of subatomic particles with no electric charge (i.e., neutrons). When two neutron stars collide, they ...
The KM3NeT collaboration is a large research group involved in the operation of a neutrino telescope network in the deep Mediterranean Sea, with the aim of detecting high-energy neutrino events. These are rare and fleeting ...
Intense radiation emitted by active supermassive black holes—thought to reside at the center of most, if not all, galaxies—can slow star growth not just in their host galaxy, but also in galaxies millions of light-years away, ...
Astronomy
Feb 18, 2026
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Hypothetical dark matter stars known as "boson stars" could leave telltale ripples across the cosmos, offering researchers a new way to probe the invisible forces shaping the universe. In 2019, a strange event was observed ...
Astronomy
Feb 13, 2026
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Supermassive black hole binaries form naturally when galaxies merge, but scientists have only confidently observed a very few of these systems that are widely separated. Black hole binaries that closely orbit each other have ...
Astronomy
Feb 12, 2026
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Astronomers have watched a dying star fail to explode as a supernova, instead collapsing into a black hole. The remarkable sighting is the most complete observational record ever made of a star's transformation into a black ...
Astronomy
Feb 12, 2026
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Researchers from Columbia University and Breakthrough Listen, a scientific research program aimed at finding evidence of civilizations beyond Earth, have published new results from the Breakthrough Listen Galactic Center ...
Astronomy
Feb 10, 2026
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Under the leadership of the University of Bonn, a research team led by Prof. Dr. Pavel Kroupa from the Helmholtz Institute for Radiation and Nuclear Physics has discovered that galaxy clusters are about twice as heavy as ...
Astronomy
Feb 9, 2026
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The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) was designed to look back in time and study galaxies that existed shortly after the Big Bang. In so doing, scientists hoped to gain a better understanding of how the universe has evolved ...
Astronomy
Feb 8, 2026
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