Black holes themselves cannot be seen: their gravitational fields are so strong that nothing can escape them—including light. That is why their edges are called event horizons, because, much like with normal horizons, seeing beyond them is impossible.
The 2019 picture captured a black hole in a galaxy millions of light-years away from us; but in 2022, they have announced the first image of the supermassive black hole that squats at the center of our own galaxy.
Scientists can't directly observe black holes with telescopes that detect x-rays, light, or other forms of electromagnetic radiation. We can, however, infer the presence of black holes and study them by detecting their effect on other matter nearby.
Radioastronomers have imaged the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way. It is only the second-ever direct image of a black hole, after the same team unveiled a historic picture of a more distant black hole in 2019.
You would be able to see out from inside, but no-one would be able to see you because any light would fall back on you. The good news is that although the gravitational pull is much stronger than smaller black holes, the stretching tidal force is less, meaning you won't be turned into spaghetti.
Black holes themselves are entirely dark and featureless. The giant ones at the centers of galaxies are also surprisingly small, despite containing millions or billions of times the mass of our sun. To make observing them yet more difficult, those giants are shrouded in clouds of dust and gas.
According to our best theory of gravity, Einstein's theory of general relativity, your spaghettified body would eventually end up at a 'singularity' – an infinitely small and dense point at the 'bottom' of the black hole.
Astronomers estimate that 100 million black holes roam among the stars in our Milky Way galaxy, but they have never conclusively identified an isolated black hole.
So in our region of the Universe, there are some 100 billion supermassive black holes. The nearest one resides in the center of our Milky Way galaxy, 28 thousand lightyears away. The most distant we know of lives in a quasar galaxy billions of lightyears away.
Black holes are regions of space where gravity is so strong that nothing can escape them, not even light. Even before you reach the event horizon – the point of no return – you would be “spaghettified” by the black hole's tidal forces. Astronomers do not actually know what goes on inside black holes.
A black hole has no physical surface, so there would be nothing to touch.
Since nothing can escape from the gravitational force of a black hole, it was long thought that black holes are impossible to destroy. But we now know that black holes actually evaporate, slowly returning their energy to the Universe.
If black holes evaporate under Hawking radiation, a solar mass black hole will evaporate over 1064 years which is vastly longer than the age of the universe. A supermassive black hole with a mass of 1011 (100 billion) M ☉ will evaporate in around 2×10100 years.
Located just under 1,600 light-years away, the discovery suggests there might be a sizable population of dormant black holes in binary systems. The black hole Gaia BH1, seen in this artist's concept near its Sun-like companion star, is the closest black hole to Earth discovered so far.
To make a black hole, one must concentrate mass or energy sufficiently that the escape velocity from the region in which it is concentrated exceeds the speed of light. Some extensions of present physics posit the existence of extra dimensions of space.
Wormholes are shortcuts in spacetime, popular with science fiction authors and movie directors. They've never been seen, but according to Einstein's general theory of relativity, they might exist.
Astronomers scanning through our Milky Way galaxy have made a remarkable and possibly rare discovery. Roughly 8,000 light years away is a binary star with the somewhat convoluted name "2MASS J05215658+4359220".
Astronomers have discovered the nearest known black hole to Earth, and it's twice as close as the previous record holder. The space-time singularity, named Gaia BH1, is 1,566 light-years away in the constellation Ophiuchus and is roughly 10 times more massive than our sun.
New black hole simulations that incorporate quantum gravity indicate that when a black hole dies, it produces a gravitational shock wave that radiates information, a finding that could solve the information paradox.
It is possible for two black holes to collide. Once they come so close that they cannot escape each other's gravity, they will merge to become one bigger black hole. Such an event would be extremely violent.
Most experts agree that the universe started as an infinitely hot and dense point called a singularity. Wait a minute. Isn't that what people call black holes? It is, in fact, and some physicists say they could be one and the same: The singularity in every black hole might give birth to a baby universe.
After just a few minutes more — 21 to 22 minutes total — the entire mass of the Earth would have collapsed into a black hole just 1.75 centimeters (0.69”) in diameter: the inevitable result of an Earth's mass worth of material collapsing into a black hole. When matter collapses, it can inevitably form a black hole.
NASA has released a haunting audio clip of sound waves rippling out of a supermassive black hole, located 250 million light-years away. The black hole is at the center of the Perseus cluster of galaxies, and the acoustic waves coming from it have been transposed up 57 and 58 octaves so they're audible to human hearing.
There's nothing on the other side. Just disassembly and death. If you're looking for an escape to another dimension, might I suggest a good book instead? Here's an article I did about how to maximize your time while falling into a black hole.
Eventually, in theory, black holes will evaporate through Hawking radiation. But it would take much longer than the entire age of the universe for most black holes we know about to significantly evaporate.