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.
New simulations show that interactions with a magnetic field can work to decrease the distance between still forming binary protostars. These results can help explain the characteristics of the binary star systems observed ...
Astronomy
Jun 5, 2026
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A team led by York University researchers has discovered the fastest wind near a supermassive black hole ever found at ultraviolet wavelengths, driven by the disk of matter (quasar) surrounding the black hole.
Astronomy
Jun 4, 2026
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The most distant, nearly invisible dormant black hole has been detected and "weighed" by an international team of astronomers that includes researchers from UCL. The study, published in Science, identified a dormant black ...
Astronomy
Jun 4, 2026
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The hunt is over. After more than 50 years of searching, astrophysicists at Northwestern University have finally discovered evidence of a powerful wind blowing from the Milky Way's central supermassive black hole, Sagittarius ...
Astronomy
Jun 4, 2026
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Everyone knows that finding the right sauce recipe can make or break a barbecue, but now astronomers are using BBQSORS (pronounced "barbecue sauce") as part of the recipe to explain quasars, some of the brightest objects ...
Astronomy
Jun 3, 2026
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An international team of astronomers have employed one of the Large-Sized Telescopes (LSTs) at the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO) to observe a distant blazar known as OP 313. Results of the observational campaign, ...
Ever since the JWST revealed a population of SMBH in the early universe that were overmassive, scientists have been working hard to explain them. These black holes existed when the universe was only about 2 billion years ...
Astronomy
Jun 2, 2026
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The physics of neutron stars are almost too fantastic to believe: something the weight of two suns compacted to a sphere the size of a city. Each teaspoon of its material would weigh billions of tons. If you've done any reading ...
Astronomy
Jun 2, 2026
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Astronomers monitoring a nearby active galaxy for six years have watched its supermassive black hole dramatically wake up, brightening by a factor of 10 across ultraviolet and X-ray wavelengths. The paper outlining the study ...
Supermassive black holes are the largest known black holes in the universe, sitting at the center of most large galaxies. They are sometimes described as cosmic monsters because they feed on surrounding gas and dust when ...
