Black hole - Wikipedia
A black hole is a region of spacetime wherein gravity is so strong that no matter or electromagnetic energy (e.g. light) can escape it. [2] Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass can deform spacetime to form a black hole. [3] [4] The boundary of no escape is called the event horizon.
2 newfound black holes are the closest ever to Earth | Space
Apr 4, 2023 · Astronomers have discovered two new black holes that are the closest ones to Earth known, and also represent something that astronomers have never seen before. The black holes, designated...
Hubble Space Telescope finds closest massive black hole to Earth …
Jul 10, 2024 · Hubble has discovered a black hole "frozen in time" that's the closest massive black hole to Earth. The intermediate-mass black hole is a "missing link" between smaller and vastly larger...
What Are Black Holes? - NASA
Sep 8, 2020 · A black hole is an astronomical object with a gravitational pull so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape it. A black hole’s “surface,” called its event horizon, defines the boundary where the velocity needed to escape exceeds the speed of …
Milky Way's biggest stellar-mass black hole lurks close to Earth
Apr 16, 2024 · Astronomers have discovered the most massive stellar-born black hole ever seen in the Milky Way, and it lies relatively close to Earth.
How Many Black Holes Are Hiding? NASA Study Homes in on …
Jan 13, 2025 · An effort to find some of the biggest, most active black holes in the universe provides a better estimate for the ratio of hidden to unhidden behemoths. ... If the doughnut hole is facing toward Earth, the bright central disk within it is visible; if the doughnut is seen edge-on, the disk is obscured. ...
10 Questions You Might Have About Black Holes - Science@NASA
Sep 23, 2019 · The most distant black hole ever detected is located in a galaxy about 13.1 billion light-years from Earth. (The age of the universe is currently estimated to be about 13.8 billion years, so this means this black hole existed about 690 million years after the Big Bang.)
Black Holes - NASA Science
Black holes can be surrounded by rings of gas and dust, called accretion disks, that emit light across many wavelengths, including X-rays. A supermassive black hole’s intense gravity can cause stars to orbit around it in a particular way.
Black hole | Definition, Formation, Types, Pictures, & Facts
3 days ago · Black hole, cosmic body of extremely intense gravity from which nothing, not even light, can escape. It can be formed by the death of a massive star wherein its core gravitationally collapses inward upon itself, compressing to a point of …
How Many Black Holes Are Hiding? NASA Study Homes in on …
Jan 13, 2025 · Most telescopes can rather easily identify face-on supermassive black holes, though not edge-on ones. But there’s an exception to this that the authors of the new paper took advantage of: The torus absorbs light from the central source and reemits lower-energy light in the infrared range (wavelengths slightly longer than what human eyes can detect).