Black holes are among the most enigmatic and mysterious objects in the Universe, and our understanding of them is still limited by the extreme challenges of studying them. However, a new proposal, published in iScience, from astrophysicist Cosimo Bambi of Fudan University in China might open an unprecedented path to exploring these mysterious phenomena. Black Holes as Cosmic Laboratories The …
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The largest black hole ever detected is 36 billion times the mass of our Sun. It exists near the upper limit predicted by our cosmological models, leaving astronomers with burning questions surrounding the relationship between black holes and their galaxy hosts. In a paper published August 7 in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, researchers announced the discovery of …
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With spectroscopy, astronomers can look for telltale signs of stars, galaxies and other celestial objects. Black holes gobble up dust and matter around them, compressing and heating the material as it swirls around and falls into the black hole. All of that can be seen with spectroscopy, said study co-author Steven Finkelstein, a professor of astronomy at the University of …
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Future technology could one day allow a miniature, laser-propelled spacecraft — no heavier than a paperclip — to travel to a nearby black hole, according to a bold new proposal published on Thursday (Aug. 7). The ambitious mission would aim to test the limits of Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity in one of the universe’s most extreme environments. It …
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About 5 billion light-years away from where you’re sitting, in one of the most massive galaxies on record, there exists an astonishing black hole. It was only just measured by scientists who managed to peer through the fabric of warped space-time — and it appears to hold a mass equivalent to that of 36 billion suns. Yes, billion. “This is …
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The ancient behemoth was present just 500 million years after the Big Bang. An international team of astronomers has identified the earliest black hole ever confirmed, an ancient behemoth that existed just 500 million years after the Big Bang. The discovery could offer new clues to a mysterious class of ancient galaxies that confounded prevailing theories of cosmology. In a …
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Black holes are some of the most mysterious objects in the Universe – a reputation not helped by the difficulty of studying them. Because these ultra-dense objects emit no light we can detect, we have to study them based on the effect they have on the space around them, from large distances across space-time. But there could be another way …
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Fifty-six years after Disney filmmakers imagined what it would be like for a spacecraft crew to journey to a black hole in the 1979 movie The Black Hole, an astrophysicist has released a plan for a real interstellar mission to go where no spacecraft has gone before. Outlined in a new paper published today in iScience, the proposal is a …
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Gov. Jared Polis on Wednesday ordered state lawmakers back to the Colorado Capitol on Aug. 21 for a special legislative session aimed at addressing the nearly $1 billion hole punched in the state budget by the so-called big, beautiful bill, congressional Republicans’ federal tax and spending measure. In his executive order calling the special session, Polis also ordered state agencies …
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In one of the world’s most ambitious geoscience projects to date, Chinese engineers have begun drilling a 10,000-meter vertical borehole into the Earth’s crust. The operation, launched in May 2024, is located in the Tarim Basin, a desert region in northwest China’s Xinjiang province, known for its rich oil deposits and extreme climate. The goal isn’t just depth for depth’s …
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