On the flip side, black holes that aren’t actively consuming mass are incredibly difficult to spot. However, scientists can still shed light (pun intended) on the nature of black holes by examining how they affect the surrounding universe.įor example, feeding black holes draw in material from nearby clouds, planets, and stars, which becomes superheated as it spirals ever closer to the event horizon, triggering the release of visible light, X-rays, and other forms of radiation.īecause of this, feeding black holes are relatively easy to see, and understand. Want to know how our #astronomers including used gravitational lensing to discover a black hole 30 billion times the mass of our Sun? Check out our explainer video here 👉 #DUInspire- Durham University March 30, 2023Īs their name suggests, black holes emit no light of their own, and they have no conventional surfaces on which a nearby light source could reflect. The resulting singularity is incredibly dense, and boasts a gravitational pull so powerful that light itself cannot escape it.Īstronomers attempting to unravel the secrets of these insatiable singularities have to contend with a unique cosmological problem: how can you understand something that you cannot physically see? An international team of astronomers led by scientists at the Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian who produced the first direct image of a black hole three years ago have now produced a portrait of a second, this time a much-anticipated glimpse of one at the heart of the Milky Way.

Black holes are born when colossal stars many times the size of our sun run out of fuel, and collapse in on themselves in spectacular fashion.

Pics of a sun turning into a black hole