Latest Black Hole News
2011
New Heavyweight Champions
An international team of astronomers has measured the masses of the heaviest black holes yet confirmed: two galactic behemoths that top the scales at about 10 billion times the mass of the Sun.
Infrared Satellite Sees Wild 'Jet'
An infrared satellite has watched the "jet" of material from a black hole vary in size and intensity.
Researchers Detail How A Distant Black Hole Devoured A Star
An orbiting X-ray satellite has been watching a supermassive black hole devour a star since March 2011.
Black Hole Holds More Water Than 100 Trillion Oceans
A quasar that's 12 billion light-years away is encircled by a massive disk of material that includes water -- more than 100 trillion times as much water as fills Earth's oceans.
Merging Galaxies Have Two Supermassive Black Holes
A survey by two space-based X-ray observatories has found that the merging galaxies known as NGC 3758 have two supermassive black holes, which are separated by just 11,000 light-years. Each black hole is gorging on stars and gas around it, producing huge amounts of energy.
Windy Black Holes
Powerful galactic winds observed by a space-based observatory support the idea that supermassive black holes shut down star formation in the centers of galaxies.
Texas Astronomers 'Weigh' Heaviest Known Black Hole
New observations show that the black hole at the center of the galaxy M87 is about 6.6 billion times as massive as the Sun, making it the most massive black hole in our cosmic neighborhood.
Taking the Pulse of a Black Hole System
The disk of hot gas around a stellar-mass black hole “beats” every 50 seconds, as it produces enormous bursts of X-rays that heat the gas and create strong “winds” of charged particles.
Puny Galaxy, Big Black Hole
Black holes can lurk at the centers of even the smallest galaxies. An example is Henize 2-10, a galaxy that is just three percent the diameter of the Milky Way. Astronomers have discovered a black hole in its core that is several million times the mass of the Sun.
2010
Astronomers Discover Possible Infant Black Hole
Observations by several orbiting X-ray telescopes have revealed a possible black hole in the nearby galaxy Messier 100. The black hole was born just 31 years ago (as seen from Earth), making it the youngest black hole ever discovered.
Bad Neighbors
The supermassive black holes in the early universe were bad neighbors. Winds and radiation from the super-hot disks of gas around them may have prevented galaxies around them from growing.
M31 Black Hole Gets Frisky
Giant eruptions mimic processes on the Sun.
Black Hole Runs Away
A supermassive black hole in a distant galaxy appears to be on the lam, zipping away from the galaxy's center at high speed.
2009
M87 Black Hole Bulks Up
A recent study that considered the mass of a galaxy's dark matter concluded that the black hole at the center of M87 is even more massive than thought -- up to seven billion times as massive as the Sun.
Tough Stellar Infants Survive Black Hole Neighborhood
Even though the region around a supermassive black hole can be cemetery for stars, astronomers have discovered that it can also serve as a stellar nursery.
2008
Whirling Around the Milky Way
European astronomers have monitored the orbits of about 30 stars in the center of the Milky Way galaxy to learn more about the galaxy's central black hole and the environment around it.
Most Black Holes Might Come in Only Small and Large
A study of a star cluster that found no evidence of a black hole suggests that black holes come in two basic sizes, with only a sprinkling of "mediums."
A New Way to Weigh Giant Black Holes
How do you weigh the biggest black holes in the universe? One answer now comes from a completely new and independent technique that astronomers have developed using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory.
Black Holes May 'Wind Up' Spiral Galaxies
Astronomers may soon be able to “weigh” the supermassive black holes in the hearts of spiral galaxies just by measuring how tightly their spiral arms wrap around their cores, according to early results of a project led by Marc Seigar of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.
Astronomers Find Suspected Medium-Sized Black Hole in Omega Centauri
A well-known star cluster that glitters with the light of millions of stars may have a mysterious dark object tugging at its core, according to researchers at The University of Texas at Austin.
Scientists Identify Smallest Known Black Hole
A black hole in a star system known as XTE J1650-500 is the smallest and least-massive black hole yet discovered, at less than four times the mass of the Sun. That is close to the expected limit for how small a black hole can be.
'Rogue' Black Holes Patrol Milky Way
If you ever travel through the galaxy in a starship, keep an eye open for “rogue” black holes. Hundreds of these refugees from globular star clusters may populate the Milky Way, with masses of 10 to several thousand times the Sun’s and speeds of several million miles per hour.
Binary Black Hole Sets New Weight Record
It’s hard to think of a black hole that is 100 million times as massive as the Sun as “little.” But in a quasar known as OJ 287, that may be the case. The black hole appears to orbit another black hole that’s the most massive yet discovered — about 18 billion times the mass of the Sun, which is several times heavier than any other black hole yet measured.
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