black hole
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Funky Black Hole Is Spinning Tilted
A team of astronomers recently observed an askew black hole just 10,000 light-years from Earth. The black hole’s spin axis is out of alignment with the plane of debris orbiting it by at least 40 degrees, the most extreme misalignment of its kind yet seen by astronomers.
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Our Understanding of Black Holes Has Changed Over Time
It took Albert Einstein 10 years to find the equations of general relativity, but German astrophysicist Karl Schwarzschild only needed a few months to solve them. Schwarzschild’s solution describes the gravity of an isolated, spherical and unchanging object — the enigmatic black hole — but it was not understood for many years. Black holes helped…
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Astronomers Spot Two Supermassive Black Holes on a Collision Course
Through a standard telescope, the nearby galaxy NGC 7727 looks like a gossamer tumbleweed drifting in the night sky. But within it are two supermassive black holes locked in a dance that will end with their violent merger. As a team of astronomers recently found, these objects are closer to Earth than any other supermassive…
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Physicists See Light Echoing From Behind a Black Hole for the First Time
Astrophysicists have detected light coming from the far side of a black hole, using telescopes to see physics predicted by Einstein’s theory of general relativity but not yet directly observed. The new findings affirmed ideas about how black holes warp light.