Black holes

After a space telescope disintegrated, astrophysicists had little hope of understanding how supermassive black holes agitate giant galaxies. Then they invented a hack.

For the first time, physicists have calculated exactly what kind of singularity lies at the center of a realistic black hole.

Calculations involving a higher dimension are guiding physicists toward a misstep in Stephen Hawking’s legendary black hole analysis.

Since the 1970s, physicists have described black holes using borrowed versions of the laws of thermodynamics. But are black holes really thermodynamic systems? Craig Callender worries that the analogy has been stretched too far.

Researchers have confirmed rumors of a black hole collision that challenges our ideas about how black holes form.

How do black holes merge and make gravitational waves? Maybe with a little help from their friends.

Tiny, dim “dwarf” galaxies have been found to hide gas-spewing black holes.

Opinions differ about what recent measurements of a sound-trapping fluid reveal about light-trapping black holes.

The astrophysicist Janna Levin reflects on the newly unveiled, first-ever photograph of a black hole.