Tag Archives: black holes

Black holes really just ever-growing balls of string, researchers say

Calculations find a flaw in the firewall argument

Black holes aren’t surrounded by a burning ring of fire after all, suggests new research.

Some physicists have believed in a “firewall” around the perimeter of a black hole that would incinerate anything sucked into its powerful gravitational pull. (more…)

Read More

LIGO detects colliding black holes for third time

UChicago scientists: Results help unveil diversity of black holes in the universe

The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory has made a third detection of gravitational waves, providing the latest confirmation that a new window in astronomy has opened. As was the case with the first two detections, the waves—ripples in spacetime—were generated when two black holes collided to form a larger black hole. (more…)

Read More

Do Stars Fall Quietly into Black Holes, or Crash into Something Utterly Unknown?

AUSTIN, Texas — Astronomers at The University of Texas at Austin and Harvard University have put a basic principle of black holes to the test, showing that matter completely vanishes when pulled in. Their results constitute another successful test for Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. (more…)

Read More

How do you feed a hungry quasar? With a ‘super boost,’ scientists say

The universe’s oldest, brightest beacons may have gorged themselves in the dense, cold, gas flows of the early cosmos — creating a kind of energy drink for infant black holes in the young universe — according to new research by scientists at Yale University and the Weizmann Institute in Israel. (more…)

Read More

Black holes do not exist as we thought they did

On January 24, the journal Nature published an article entitled “There are no black holes.” 1 It doesn’t take much to spark controversy in the world of physics…But what does this really mean? In a brief article published on arXiv, a scientific preprint server, Stephen Hawking proposed a theory of black holes that could reconcile the principles of general relativity and quantum physics. (more…)

Read More

‘Spooky action’ builds a wormhole between ‘entangled’ particles

Quantum entanglement, a perplexing phenomenon of quantum mechanics that Albert Einstein once referred to as “spooky action at a distance,” could be even spookier than Einstein perceived.

Physicists at the University of Washington and Stony Brook University in New York believe the phenomenon might be intrinsically linked with wormholes, hypothetical features of space-time that in popular science fiction can provide a much-faster-than-light shortcut from one part of the universe to another. (more…)

Read More

The Era of Neutrino Astronomy has Begun

COLLEGE PARK, Md. – Astrophysicists using a telescope embedded in Antarctic ice have succeeded in a quest to detect and record the mysterious phenomena known as cosmic neutrinos – nearly massless particles that stream to Earth at the speed of light from outside our solar system, striking the surface in a burst of energy that can be as powerful as a baseball pitcher’s fastball. Next, they hope to build on the early success of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory to detect the source of these high-energy particles, said Physics Professor Gregory Sullivan, who led the University of Maryland’s 12-person team of contributors to the IceCube Collaboration.

“The era of neutrino astronomy has begun,” Sullivan said as the IceCube Collaboration announced the observation of 28 very high-energy particle events that constitute the first solid evidence for astrophysical neutrinos from cosmic sources.  (more…)

Read More