Why they're black: Their gravitational pull is so extreme that even light can't escape Black holes are places where gravity is so powerful that nothing — not even light — can escape. Rather than being ...

Black holes are often portrayed as cosmic monsters—mysterious voids that devour everything in their path, including light itself. While that description isn’t far off, there’s a lot more to these ...

At the center of our galaxy lies a swirling, energy-spewing supermassive black hole called Sagittarius A* or Sgr A*, for short. For billions of years, surrounding gas and dust have been falling into ...

Nearly every massive galaxy observed hosts a supermassive black hole at its center. NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has discovered that some of these supermassive black holes may even be too big for ...

Astronomers have found stars that repeatedly skim past supermassive black holes, surviving each encounter while producing a ...

Physicists may soon witness a cosmic fireworks show: the explosive death of a primordial black hole. Once thought to be unimaginably rare, new research suggests there’s up to a 90% chance of catching ...

Every galaxy has a supermassive black hole at its center, much like every egg has a yolk. But sometimes, hens lay eggs with two yolks. In a similar way, astrophysicists like us who study supermassive ...

A new simulation could help solve one of astronomy’s longstanding mysteries—how supermassive black holes formed so rapidly—along with a new one: What are the James Webb Space Telescope’s (JWST) ...

The universe keeps telling us that black holes exist in an "impossible" mass zone. That's leaving astronomers to find alternative origin stories for black holes. Reading time 3 minutes Since LIGO’s ...

Supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies are one of the most active fields of research in astronomy. In order to accumulate their enormous masses, they must merge with each other. A ...

Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to ...

Black holes are places where gravity is so powerful that nothing — not even light — can escape. Rather than being empty, black holes are chock full of matter that gets squeezed into a teensy space.