supermassive black hole tagged posts

The supermassive black hole lurking at the center of our Milky Way galaxy is not as dormant as had been thought, a new study shows.

The slumbering giant woke up around 200 years ago to gobble up some nearby cosmic objects before going back to sleep, according to the study published in the journal Nature on Wednesday.

NASA’s IXPE space observatory spotted an Xray echo of this powerful resurgence of activity, the researchers said.

The supermassive black hole Sagittarius A—abbreviated to Sgr A—is four million times more massive than the Sun. It sits 27,000 light years from Earth at the center of the Milky Way’s spiral.

Last year astronomers revealed the first...

Over 13 billion years ago, the first galaxies in the universe formed. They were elliptical, with intermediate black holes (IMBHs) at their centers surrounded by a halo of stars, gas, and dust. Over time, these galaxies evolved by flattening out into disks with a large bulge in the middle. They were then drawn together by mutual gravitational attraction to form galaxy clusters, massive collections that comprise the large-scale cosmic structure. This force of attraction also led to mergers, where galaxies and their central black holes came together to create larger spiral galaxies with central supermassive black holes (SMBHs).

What happens when a dying star flies too close to a supermassive black hole? Astronomers discover a bright optical flare caused by a dying star’s encounter with a supermassive black hole.

According to University of Maryland astronomer Igor Andreoni, several things happen: first, the star is violently ripped apart by the black hole’s gravitational tidal forces — similar to how the Moon pulls tides on Earth but with greater strength. Then, pieces of the star are captured into a swiftly spinning disk orbiting the black hole. Finally, the black hole consumes what remains of the doomed star in the disk. This is what astronomers call a tidal disruption event (TDE).

But in some extremely rare cases, the supermassive black ho...

Some of the brightest objects in the sky are called blazars...