black hole

Topic description and stories

Illustration of gravitational vortex, Credit: ESA/ATG medialab

Gravitational vortex provides new way to study matter close to a black hole

12 Jul 2016

An international team of astronomers has proved the existence of a ‘gravitational vortex’ around a black hole, solving a mystery that has eluded...

Computer simulations motivated by GW150914

Using gravitational waves to catch runaway black holes

30 Jun 2016

Black holes are the most powerful gravitational force in the Universe. So what could cause them to be kicked out of their host galaxies? Cambridge...

Artist’s impression depicting a compact object – either a black hole or a neutron star – feeding on gas from a companion star in a binary system.

Winds a quarter the speed of light spotted leaving mysterious binary systems

27 Apr 2016

Astronomers have observed two black holes in nearby galaxies devouring their companion stars at an extremely high rate, and spitting out matter at a...

Five-dimensional black hole could ‘break’ general relativity

19 Feb 2016

Researchers have successfully simulated how a ring-shaped black hole could cause general relativity to break down: assuming the universe contains at...

Gravitational waves detected 100 years after Einstein’s prediction

11 Feb 2016

New window on the universe is opened with the observation of gravitational waves – ripples in spacetime – caused by the collision of two black holes...

Detail from animation of a black hole devouring a star

How to escape a black hole

26 Nov 2015

An international team of astrophysicists, including researchers from the University of Cambridge, has observed a new way for gas to escape the...

Black Holes Go 'Mano a Mano' (NASA, Chandra, 10/06/09)

New insights found in black hole collisions

27 Mar 2015

New research provides revelations about the most energetic event in the universe — the merging of two spinning, orbiting black holes into a much...

Illustration of the outflow (red) and gas flowing in to the quasar in the centre (blue). The cold clumps shown in the inset image are expelled out of the galaxy in a 'galactic hailstorm'

Galactic ‘hailstorm’ in the early Universe

16 Jan 2015

Astronomers have been able to peer back to the young Universe to determine how quasars – powered by supermassive black holes with the mass of a...

Astronomers discover the ‘Mighty Mouse’ of stellar remnants

08 Oct 2014

An international team of astronomers has found a pulsating, dead star beaming with the energy of about 10 million suns. This is the brightest pulsar...