Observations from the Event Horizon Telescope may reveal a secret merger in our supermassive black hole's past, potentially explaining the cosmic monster's unusual spin.
The mystery of how supermassive black holes, which can be millions of times more massive than the sun and sit at the heart of most galaxies, came to exist is one of the great questions in astrophysics.
Like two Sumo wrestlers squaring off, the closest confirmed pair of supermassive black holes have been observed in tight proximity. These are located approximately 300 light-years apart and were detected using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope…
Galaxy collisions are foundational events in the Universe. They happen when two systems mingle stars in a cosmic dance. They also cause spectacular mergers of supermassive black holes. The result is one very changed galaxy and a singular,…
Large galaxies like ours are hosts to Supermassive Black Holes (SMBHs.) They can be so massive that they resist comprehension, with some of them having billions of times more mass than the Sun. Ours, named Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), is a…
The tag team of NASA space telescopes Hubble and Chandra has demonstrated that two is definitely better than one when it comes to pairings of supermassive black holes and hunting for them.
By Ashley Strickland, CNN (CNN) — Two telescopes have spotted the closest pair of supermassive black holes to date. The duo, only about 300 light-years apart, were observed in different wavelengths of light using NASA’s Chandra X-ray…
Cores of Two Galaxies Are on a Collision Course For all practical purposes, stars traveling across space never smash into each other. The ratio between a starlike sun’s diameter and its distance to the next neighboring star is about 1:10…
Like two Sumo wrestlers squaring off, the closest confirmed pair of supermassive black holes have been observed in tight proximity. These are located approximately 300 light-years apart and were detected using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope…
Researchers have discovered compelling evidence suggesting that the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy, known as Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), is likely the result of a past cosmic merger. The study builds on recent…
The origins of aptly named supermassive black holes—which can weigh in at more than a million times the mass of the sun and reside in the center of most galaxies—remain one of the great mysteries of the cosmos.
It takes a long time for supermassive black holes, like the one at the center of our Milky Way galaxy, to form. Typically, the birth of a black hole requires a giant star with the mass of at least 50 of our suns to burn out - a process…
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) keeps finding supermassive black holes (SMBH) in the early Universe. They’re in active galactic nuclei seen only 500,000 years after the Big Bang. This was long before astronomers thought they could…