supermassive black holes tagged posts

According to a new Physical Review Letters study, black holes could help solve the dark matter mystery. The shadowy regions in black hole images captured by the Event Horizon Telescope can act as ultra-sensitive detectors for the invisible material that makes up most of the universe’s matter.

Dark matter makes up roughly 85% of the universe’s matter, but scientists still don’t know what it actually is. While researchers have proposed countless ways to detect it, this study introduces black hole imaging as a fresh detection method—one that comes with some distinct benefits.

The...

Could black holes help explain high-energy cosmic radiation?

Scientists may have finally uncovered the mystery behind ultra-high-energy cosmic rays — the most powerful particles known in the universe. A team from NTNU suggests that colossal winds from supermassive black holes could be accelerating these particles to unimaginable speeds. These winds, moving at half the speed of light, might not only shape entire galaxies but also fling atomic nuclei across the cosmos with incredible energy.

The universe is full of different types of radiation and particles that can be observed here on Earth. This includes photons across the entire range of the electromagnetic spectrum, from the lowest radio frequencies all the way to the highest-energy gamma rays...

Quasars represent some of the most luminous and energetic phenomena in the universe. These distant powerhouses are driven by supermassive black holes—colossal gravitational engines with masses millions to billions of times that of our sun—which actively devour surrounding matter at incredible rates.

As gas, dust, and stellar material spiral inward through an accretion disk superheated to millions of degrees, this matter releases tremendous energy across the electromagnetic spectrum before crossing the event horizon. The resulting emissions can outshine entire galaxies despite originating from a region no larger than our solar system.

The discovery of billion-solar-mass black holes in distant quasars challenges conventional gr...

New observations from the National Science Foundation National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s (NSF NRAO) Karl G...