Smallest Known Black Hole Discovered National Geographic - April 2, 2008
World's First Movie Of Black Hole Birth Science Daily - March 28, 2008
Milky Way's antimatter linked to exotic black holes New Scientist - January 22, 2008
The "supermassive" black holes at the centres of most galaxies could be spinning at a dizzying rate BBC - January 12, 2008
Huge black hole tips the scales BBC - January 10, 2008
Black holes may harbour their own universes New Scientist - October 31, 2007
Massive Stellar Black Hole Smashes Record Space.com - October 30, 2007
Can Black Holes Transport You to Other Worlds? Live Science - October 8, 2007
Black Hole Eclipse NASA - April 13, 2007
Black hole found in ancient lair BBC - January 5, 2007
Cosmos packed with black holes News in Science - October 9, 2006
Black hole findings yield new mysteries Space.com - July 11, 2006
Magnetism nudges matter into black holes National Geographic - June 21, 2006
Black Hole Pair Sets Proximity Record and come very close Space.com - May 2, 2006
Older Black Holes Still Full of Energy Scientific American - April 25, 2006
Chandra finds black holes are 'green' National Geographic - April 24, 2006
Black hole mergers modelled in 3D BBC - April 19, 2006
Black Holes Bound to Merge Space.com - April 7, 2006
Most distant cosmic explosion was a star collapsing into a black hole PhysOrg - March 8, 2006
Animation: Slow Birth of a Black Hole Space.com - March 8, 2006
Hitching a Ride Out of a Gluttonous Black Hole PhysOrg - February 26, 2006
Black hole puts dent in space-time MSNBC - January 25, 2006
Vanishing Gas Confirms Black Hole Event Horizons Space.com - January 10, 2006
Supermassive Black Hole at Center of Milky Way "Sagittarius A Star" National Geographic - November 2, 2005
Images Reveal the Surroundings of a Super-massive Black Hole PhysOrg - October 17, 2005
The black hole at the center of the Milky Way is actually helping stars form Space.com - October 14, 2005
Black Hole Forges Invisible Bubble Space.com - August 17, 2005
Eye-to-Eye with a Black Hole Space.com - July 11, 2005
X-Ray "Vision" Unlocking Black Hole Mysteries National Geographic - May 25, 2005
Scientists Watch Black Hole Born In Split-Second Light Flash Science Daily - May 17, 2005
Creation of Black Hole Detected Space.com May 9, 2005
Rhode Island: Did they create a black hole in the lab? BBC - March 2005
Astronomers Measure Mass Of Smallest Black Hole In A Galactic Nucleus Science Daily - March 2005
Very largest black holes reach a certain point and then grow no more Science Daily - February 2005
Runt of the litter? Odd Black Hole Revealed Space.com - February 2005
Black Holes Spark Star Formation Space.com - February 2005
Milky Way's Center Packed with Black Holes Space.com - January 2005
Matter Rides Black Hole's Space-Time Wave Space.com - January 2005
Black Holes: Biggest Space Explosion Creates Giant Bubbles Space.com - January 2005
Twisted Physics: How Black Holes Spout Off Space.com - August 2004
Scientists Spot Doughnut-Shaped Cloud With a Black Hole Filling Goddard - July 2004
Dublin - Hawking: Black Holes Mangle Matter, Energy Space.com - July 2004
Massive Black Hole Stumps Researchers Space.com - July 2004
Youngest Possible Black Hole Spotted Near Birth Space.com - June 2004
Odd Black Hole Defies Explanation Space.com - June 2004
Swirling Dust Near Black Hole Too Thick for Theory Space.com - May 2004
Runaway Star Collisions Create Black Holes Space.com - April 2004
Dark Matter and Black Holes at the Galactic Center Space.com - March 2004
Black Holes: Fuzzy Tangles of Strings? Space.com - March 2004
Black hole tears star apart BBC - February 2004
The True Shape of Black Holes Space.com
How the release of energy from massive black holes are shaping two distant galaxies Science Daily - May 2003
The give and take of black holes BBC - March 2003
Most distant black hole weighed BBC March 2003
The New History of Black Holes: 'Co-evolution' Dramatically Alters Dark Reputation Space.com January 2003
Close-up on a quasar BBC - January 2003
Black hole 'on a diet' BBC - January 2003
Black hole hunter's first image BBC - December 2002
Black holes 'on collision course' BBC - Nov. 2002
Black hole's on-the-run snack BBC Nov. 2002
Old galaxies have youthful shine BBC - September 2002
Astronomers reach the event horizon July 11, 2002 - New Scientist
Scientists Observe Light Fighting To Escape Black Hole's Pull June 2002 - Science Daily
Hubble rings a black hole BBC - November 30, 2000
Sept. 12, 2000 - Reuters
An x-ray image, taken by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and
released September 12, 2000, of the central region of the starburst
galaxy M82 shows a black hole (center bright object) that scientists
say bridges the gap between small and large black holes. The black
hole, with a mass of more than 500 suns, is the first confirmed case
of such a large black hole outside the nucleus of a galaxy, and is
believed to represent a new type of black hole formed by the merger
of scores of black holes, or by the collapse of a 'hyperstar' formed by
the coalescence of many stars.
Black holes, those matter-sucking
drains in space, used to come in only two sizes: small and
extra, extra large. Tuesday, NASA offered evidence of a
mid-size ``missing link'' black hole. Astronomers have theorized for years that such ``missing
links'' existed in the rarefied world of black holes, but now
they may have detected an example of this type using NASA's
orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory. A black hole with the mass of 500 suns packed into a region
the size of Earth's moon has been detected in the M82 galaxy
some 12 million to 15 million light years away, Wallace Tucker
of the Chandra X-ray Observatory Center in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, said by telephone. Unlike black holes with a mass of up to a billion stars
that tend to lie at a galaxy's center, the ``missing link'' is
located some 600 light years from the heart of M82. That is
relatively close in galactic terms. A light year is about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion km),
the distance light travels in a year. Relatively tiny black holes, known as stellar black holes
because many have the mass of just a single star, are scattered
throughout galaxies, including the Milky Way, which contains
Earth. Black holes are the gluttons of the cosmos, gobbling up
everything that comes near, not even letting light escape. For
that reason they are invisible to scientists but can be
detected by activity around their edges. Scientists had suspected that M82 might contain a so-called
mid-mass black hole, but these suspicions were not confirmed
until high-resolution images made with Chandra found that most
X-rays in the galaxy were coming from a single, bright source. Repeated observations of M82 also showed that the X-ray
flickered, brightening and dimming every 10 minutes or so. This
flicker is the tell-tale sign of a black hole slurping gas from
a nearby star or cloud, NASA scientists said. ``This is an interesting scientific mystery that's been
solved by superior resolution of the Chandra observatory,''
Tucker said. He said scientists reported years ago that such an X-ray
source might exist in M82 and there were also hints of such
sources in other galaxies. But the telescopes could only ``see''
the center of the galaxy as ``one big blob,'' lacking the power
to determine just where the X-rays were coming from. The M82 ``missing link'' is not in the absolute center of the
galaxy, but comparatively close to it. It does seem to be in an
area of rapid star formation and this raises questions about
how the mid-size black hole formed, Tucker said. ``Did black holes that formed from normal stars form and
then merge to form a 500 solar mass black hole or did massive
stars collide and merge to form a hyperstar, that then
collapsed to form (the ``missing link'') in one fell swoop?'' he
said. Stellar black holes form as a natural consequence of
evolution of massive stars that run out of the fuel they need
to support their inner portions, which collapse of their own
weight to form a black hole.
The black hole is located in the hub of a galaxy called NGC 4438, whose
light takes 50 million years to reach Earth. The galaxy as a whole can be
seen in the picture below.
June 5, 2000 - Reuters
If you want to be a big strong
black hole, you have to eat a lot of cosmic gas and stars, so it
helps if you live in a generous, plump galaxy instead of a
stingy, puny one, astronomers said on Monday. Astronomers have long pondered which came first, the massive
black hole or the galaxy that surrounds it. Research presented
at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Rochester
suggested they develop together and the size of galaxies
probably determines how big black holes get.
Evidence collected by the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope
indicated monstrous black holes -- those weighing more than a
billion times the mass of our sun -- grew on a diet of stars and
gas controlled by their host galaxies in their formative years. Galaxies with a big bulge of stars in the middle are much
more likely to spawn a massive black hole, while comparatively
flat-bellied galaxies like our Milky Way harbor black holes with
only a few million solar masses, the scientists said in
statements. Scientists at the University of Texas, the University of
California at Santa Cruz and the University of Michigan were
able to reach these conclusions because of the recent discovery
of 10 supermassive black holes in galaxy centers, raising the
total number of known black holes to 30, a large enough group
for study. To measure the masses of black holes -- huge matter-sucking
drains that gobble up everything that gets within their pull,
even light -- astronomers used the average speed of stars near
the black hole. The closer the stars get to the black hole, the faster they
move. The galaxies with small average star speeds have small
black holes, while those with very high speeds contain extremely
large black holes, the astronomers found.
A jet of particles discovered shooting from a binary star system named V4641 in
the constellation Sagittari is most likely a signal from the closest black hole to the
Earth yet discovered. The Very Large Array radio telescopes registered the
above signals from the star system on Sept. 14. The red areas indicate strong
radio emissions.
January 20, 2000 - AP
A totally unexpected blast of X-rays from a previously mundane binary star system is almost certainly a signal from the nearest black hole to Earth ever discovered, astronomers say.
The suspected black hole is just 1,600 light-years away from Earth, practically on the doorstep in astronomical terms, the astronomers said at last week's American Astronomical Society national meeting in Atlanta.
Caught by a wide-angle X-ray camera on board the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) satellite, the Sept. 15 flare-up lasted two hours and was temporarily the second-brightest object in the X-ray sky, after the sun.
"It rocked me back on my heels," says Donald Smith, an astronomer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
On the night of Sept. 14, Smith received word that an amateur astronomer in Australia had noticed an unusual brightening in a variable star named V4641 in the constellation Sagittari.
Smith added it to a list of stars he was observing that night with the
All-Sky Monitor on RXTE. Then he got the surprise of his life.
"It was completely undetectable until the last line of my data," says
Smith, "Then it jumped to being the sixth brightest thing in the sky."
The source brightened and faded four times.
Simultaneous observations with the Very Large Array radio telescope in New
Mexico spotted two jets of material shooting out from the black hole
candidate. The jets faded from view shortly after the X-ray outburst.
"That is very unique behavior," says MIT astrophysicist Rudy Wijnands, who
helped analyze the data. "These rapid brightness variations are usually a
sign that it is a black hole."
Walter Lewin, another MIT astrophysicist who did not participate in the
discovery, agrees, but he points out that a direct measurement of the mass
of the black hole candidate is needed to confirm the discovery.
"I wouldn't bet a month's salary that it is a black hole," says Lewin, "But
I would bet a hundred dollars."
Smith hopes to settle the bet with optical telescope observations next
summer when the star V4641 is again visible in the night sky.
January 13, 2000 - Reuters
Two teams of astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope and
ground-based telescopes in Australia and Chile have discovered the
first examples of isolated stellar-mass black holes adrift among the
stars in our galaxy. Two images of a crowded starfield as seen
through a ground-based telescope show the subtle brightening of a
star due to the effect of gravitational microlensing, where an invisible
but massive foreground object passes in front of the star and
amplifies its light. The object is estimated to be a six-solar-mass
black hole that is drifting alone among the stars.
Some black holes are naked vagrants
drifting alone through the Milky Way rather than haloed objects
waltzing around companion stars, astronomers said. The discovery of two such lone black holes could give clues
to what ultimately happens to big, normal stars, the scientists
said in research presented at the annual meeting of the American
Astronomical Society in Atlanta. Most black holes -- monstrous matter-sucking drains in space
from which not even light can escape -- have been found in orbit
around normal stars. While these black holes themselves are
invisible, astronomers determine their existence by looking at
the surrounding matter just before it is gobbled up. These two candidate black holes were harder to spot, since
without a companion star, they did not have much to ``eat'' and
so there was no sloppy, visible trace of heated matter around
the holes' rim. ``An isolated black hole is actually a very dull object,''
Charles Alcock of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in
California said at a news conference with other astronomers. He described a celestial object that simply drifts in space
-- ``At some level, we're all drifting,'' Alcock said -- without
doing much of anything. Astronomers using the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope and
ground-based telescopes in Australia and Chile employed a
technique called gravitational microlensing to identify the two
naked candidates. To do this, they watched what happened to stars as they
passed behind black holes. The powerful gravity of the black
hole bends the light coming from the star, making it look like
two banana-shaped crescents around where the black hole is
suspected to be. The astronomers studied 300 microlensing events to find the
two naked black hole candidates. ``These results suggest that black holes are common and that
many massive but normal stars may end their lives as black
holes,'' David Bennett of the University of Notre Dame in
Indiana told reporters. This also could mean that black holes might be able to form
in the collapse of isolated massive stars besides being produced
by interaction in a double-star system, the astronomers said. Most galaxies, including the Milky Way, which contains the
sun and our solar system, are thought to harbor black holes at
their hearts. But all previous black holes with about the same
mass as a star were found in orbit around normal stars, making
their presence known by their effect on their companion.
CRYSTALINKS MAILING LIST, NEWSLETTER, UPDATES
Biggest black hole in cosmos discovered New Scientist - January 10, 2008
Video: "Death Star" Galaxy a Bully? National Geographic - December 19, 2007
NASA Announces Discovery of Assault by a Black Hole NASA - December 18, 2007
"Death Star" Galaxy Found Blasting Smaller Neighbor National Geographic - December 17, 2007
Black hole 'bully' blasts galaxy BBC - December 17, 2007
Monster Black Hole Busts Theory Space.com - October 18, 2007
Most Massive Stellar Black Hole Found in Binary System National Geographic - October 17, 2007
First black hole found in globular star cluster New Scientist - January 4, 2007
Indirect evidence from X-ray telescopes has revealed telltale
signs of thousands of black holes lurking in our own galaxy
and beyond. Many are the remnants of exploded stars.
This gives insight into how black holes generate energy and affect their environment.
Scientists simulate relativity's recipe for massive mergers
In a process similar to teleportation, quantum information inside the
black hole entangles itself with Hawking radiation. As the black hole
evaporates, the information is mostly preserved in the radiation ...
A spinning black hole in the constellation Scorpius has created a stable dent in the fabric of space-time, scientists say. The dent is the sort of thing predicted by Albert Einsteinšs theory of general relativity. It affects the movement of matter falling into the black hole.The space-time dent is invisible, but scientists deduced its existence after detecting two X-ray frequencies from the black hole that were identical to emissions noted nine years ago. The finding will allow scientists to calculate the black holešs spin, a crucial measurement necessary for describing the object's behavior.
Scientists Find Black Hole's 'Point of No Return'
The jets are the result of some really twisted physics, according to a new
computer model. And to unravel the mystery, a researcher invokes some
imaginary string, a corkscrew and a certain child's plaything - the Slinky.
Stephen Hawking - black holes, the mysterious massive vortexes formed
from collapsed stars, do not destroy everything they consume but
instead eventually fire out matter and energy in a mangled form.
Stephen Hawking's Website
A team of astronomers have found a colossal black hole so ancient,
they're not sure how it had enough time to grow to its current size,
about 10 billion times the mass of the Sun.
A close-up view of a donut-shaped disk of dust around a black hole
confirms several expectations about the massive structure but has
astronomers wondering how the disk could be so thick.
Black holes may not be the smooth.
Scientists think the doomed star drifted too close to a giant black
hole and gradually fell under the influence of its enormous gravity.
The tidal forces of the black hole pulled on the star, stretching it
until it tore apart. The black hole then swallowed some of the matter
left behind causing a flare of X-rays that was detected on Earth.
Scientists have found evidence of high-speed winds blowing away
vast amounts of gas from the cores of two quasar galaxies.
The colliding galaxies known as The Mice and their black holes
will eventually merge into a single giant galaxy. Such mergers
can generate a quasar phase of galactic evolution.
The most detailed view yet of a feeding black hole in
the centre of a remote quasar has been obtained.
It seems the supermassive black hole that sits at the
centre of our galaxy, the Milky Way, is famished.
For the first time two supermassive black holes have been seen at
the heart of one galaxy. One day there will be a devastating collision.
At the galaxy's core lies a powerful black hole
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