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    Black hole jets reach far beyond galaxies’ visible edges, potentially deciding their fate

    September 30, 2026, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    ASU astronomers uncover black hole jets reaching far beyond their galaxies and deciding their fate
    Artist’s illustration of a supermassive black hole at the center of a radio galaxy launching powerful jets (shown in pink) all the way into the galaxy’s CGM. The study finds that these jets do not light up the surrounding gas equally in all directions. Instead, the hydrogen gas glows (shown in red) most strongly along the path of the radio jets. This suggests that black holes can send energy far beyond the galaxy’s center and shape the larger gas reservoir that regulates star formation and fate of galaxies. We use optical data from the DESI survey and radio observations from the LOFAR Two meter Sky Survey (LoTss). Credit: Hailey Nelson/ Arizona State University.

    Galaxies are enormous and hold hundreds of billions of stars. These stars form from cold, dense gas...

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    A Black Hole as light as 40 tons can exist inside a star if dark matter helps

    September 7, 2026, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    A black hole as light as 40 tons can exist inside a star if dark matter helps
    Schematic illustration of the competing processes governing the evolution of an endoparasitic black hole (EBH) inside a compact star. The EBH simultaneously accretes baryonic matter from the stellar medium (black arrows) and captured dark-matter particles (blue arrows), while losing mass through Hawking radiation (red arrows). The three panels illustrate the possible regimes: (a) accretion dominates and the EBH grows, (b) accretion and Hawking evaporation balance and the EBH remains at approximately constant mass, and (c) Hawking evaporation dominates and the EBH shrinks and ultimately evaporates. The relative number of arrows schematically represents the balance between the corresponding mass-flow rates. In case (b), EBH can have a mass as small as 40 metric tons. Credit: H. A. Adarsha
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    Black hole feeding frenzy ends in lingering cosmic indigestion

    July 31, 2026, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Black hole feeding frenzy ends in cosmic indigestion
    Artist impression of SwiftJ1727 with donor jet clouds. Credit: John A. Paice & Noel Castro Segura et al, ‘SwiftJ1727—Final—No Overlay—DonorJetClouds’, (2026).

    Black holes are often portrayed as cosmic gluttons that swallow everything that comes too close. But new observations of a dramatic black hole outburst—led by Warwick Postdoctoral Fellow Dr. Noel Castro Segura—suggest the reality is much messier.

    Using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), astronomers followed the newly discovered black hole system Swift J1727.8−1613 through a spectacular 2023 eruption. The work is published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

    Astronomers found that as the black hole consumed gas from a nearby star, it simultaneously launch...

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    Could we send a spacecraft to a black hole?

    July 28, 2026, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Artist's depiction of a stellar black hole in a binary system. Credit - ESO/L. Calçada/M.Kornmesser
    Artist’s depiction of a stellar black hole in a binary system. Credit – ESO/L. Calçada/M.Kornmesser

    Black holes represent some of the most extreme environments in the universe. They are the sources of the strongest gravitational fields, allowing us to test Einstein’s theory of general relativity to an extent impossible with small objects. But we are also reaching the limit of what we can learn about one remotely. So, various authors have put forward ideas for how we might eventually send a probe directly to a black hole to observe it up close. One of the most vocal of those authors is Cosimo Bambi of Fudan University in Shanghai—and he recently released a paper, available as a preprint on arXiv, about what it would take to send a gram-sized probe to a nearby black hole.

    Unfortuna...

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