black hole

A black hole is a region of spacetime whose gravitational field is so strong that nothing which enters it, not even light, can escape.[1] The theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass will deform spacetime to form a black hole. Around a black hole there is a mathematically defined surface called an event horizon that marks the point of no return. It is called "black" because it absorbs all the light that hits the horizon, reflecting nothing, just like a perfect black body in thermodynamics.[2][3]Quantum mechanics predicts that black holes emit radiation like a black body with a finite temperature. This temperature is inversely proportional to the mass of the black hole, making it difficult to observe this radiation for black holes of stellar mass or greater.

For more information about black hole check the Wikipedia article here

ZME Science posts about black hole

Supermassive black hole caught devouring a star

Thu, May 3, 2012

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In a distant galaxy, 2.7 billion light years away, a supermassive black hole, thousands of times more massive than our own sun, despicably swallowed a star, slowly engulfing it with no trace to be found afterwards; and the black hole would’ve gotten away with it, if it weren’t for that meddling NASA and those pesky Galaxy Evolution Explorer [...]

Cosmic wind blowing at 20,000 mph generated by black hole

Wed, Feb 22, 2012

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Astronomers at NASA‘s Chandra X-ray Observatory have come across a true astronomical oddity at the outskirts of the Milky Way, a stellar-mass black hole which exerts the fastest winds ever observed so far in its class – so fast that it rivals those blown by supermassive black holes, which often are billion times more massive. [...]

Weird black hole is the sole survivor of its galaxy

Wed, Feb 15, 2012

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Some black holes are just meant to survive, regardless of what they go through. This is probably the case with the HLX-1 black hole, 20.000 times more massive than the Sun, which is practically floating on the outskirts of a galaxy. The problem with this supermassive black hole is that judging by its size, should [...]

Astronomers use massive objects in space as huge telescopes, find brightest galaxy via gravity lens

Tue, Feb 7, 2012

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Whenever a massive object, with an equally massive gravitational pull, like black holes or galaxy clusters, falls between an observer, say a telescope, and a distant target in the background to be observed, than a gravitational lens is formed. Light emitted from the distant object gets twisted by the massive object, and ends up distorted [...]

Achieving the unbelievable: taking a picture of a black hole

Thu, Jan 19, 2012

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Black Holes are the least understood entities, so far, in the Universe. However, if there’s one thing scientists know for sure about them, it’s that they’re the most extreme environment in cosmos. Black Holes have such a powerful, relentless gravity pull that it swallows absolutely everything in its vicinity, even light gets absorbed with zero [...]

Researchers find smallest known black hole

Sat, Dec 17, 2011

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Researchers working at the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer have probably discovered what can be described as the heart beat of the smallest known black hole. This comes in less then a month after astrophysicists discovered the biggest known black hole in the Universe. An international team worked on this research, which relied on detecting X-rays [...]

Half of supermassive black holes are surrounded by ‘dust clouds’

Mon, Oct 31, 2011

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Black holes are perhaps the most fascinating and staggering objects in the known Universe, and we are just now beginning to uncover their secrets. Dr. Sergei Nayakshin of the University of Leicester and his team found that doughnut-shaped dust shrouds that cover about half of supermassive black holes may very well be the result of [...]

Black hole caught eating a star

Thu, Aug 25, 2011

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For the first time in human history we have witnessed a black hole in the act of ‘eating’ a star that just got too close. So far, astronomers have only found the aftermath of such events, and they say that seeing the black hole in the act is shedding a lot of light on ‘relativistic [...]

Enormous water reservoir found in space is bigger than 140 trillion earth oceans

Mon, Jul 25, 2011

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Astronomers have discovered the largest body of water so far known, a reservoir of water floating in space around a ancient distant quasar,  holding 140 trillion times the mass of water in the Earth’s oceans. Remarkably enough, the find was dated as being 12 billion light years away, only  1.6 billion light years farther from [...]

Some black holes may be older than time itself

Sat, May 7, 2011

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An intriguing hypothesis was brought up by Professor Bernard Carr from Queen Mary University in London and Professor Alan Coley from Canada’s Dalhousie University, who claims that some of the black holes we see today may actually be remnants of a past universe that collapsed into itself after a Big Crunch. I don’t know about [...]

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