black holes
-
New Image Exposes Intense Magnetic Field of the Milky Way’s Supermassive Black Hole
A new image of our galaxy’s central black hole reveals the magnetic field surrounding the object in polarized light. The image reveals how gas and superheated matter in the immediate vicinity of the black hole move around it. But aside from that, it’s a great way to visualize the extreme physics happening at the center…
-
Hell Yeah, We’re Getting a Space-Based Gravitational Wave Observatory
Stay calm, everybody stay calm. But it’s finally happening: The European Space Agency is committing itself to the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), a gravitational wave observatory that will study some of the universe’s most enigmatic phenomena. On Thursday, LISA was formally adopted, meaning that ESA “recognises that the mission concept and technology are sufficiently…
-
Behold, Our Galaxy Visualised in Gravitational Waves
No space-based gravitational wave observatory exists…yet. But that hasn’t stopped a team of astronomers from demonstrating how the gravitational universe might look, using simulated data to create a “synthetic gravitational sky.” Gravitational waves are perturbations in spacetime that were predicted by Einstein in his theory of general relativity; as Einstein described them, the waves are…
-
Massive Black Holes Littered the Early Universe, Simulation Suggests
Since the gravitational waves predicted by Einstein were first detected in 2015, astrophysicists have been pondering the gravitational wave background — the cumulative undulations of these spacetime ripples as they cross the cosmos.