Black Holes

Last April, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) sparked international excitement when it unveiled the first image of a black hole. Today, a team of researchers have published new calculations that predict a striking and intricate substructure within...

On April 10, 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration presented the first ever close-up image of a black hole.

For Bloomberg Opinion, Faye Flam reports that the telescope array will yield a second black hole image in 2020:

“In 2020, we will get...

At the center of our galaxy, millions of stars whirl in orbits around a supermassive black hole. This circuit can take anywhere from a few hours for stars close to the event horizon of the black hole to thousands of years for their distant neighbors...

"'This is the first indication of accretion with a direction of rotation,' says Lena Murchikova, a theoretical astrophysicist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., and lead author of a study reporting the new results, published...

A team of researchers, led by Lena Murchikova, Bezos Member in the School of Natural Sciences, has made new strides in understanding the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy, Sagittarius A*. The results, to be published in N...

For the first time in human history, the world laid eyes on an image of a black hole and the ghostly shadow of its event horizon. Yet despite this illuminating breakthrough, many more questions remain unanswered of the ubiquitous dark structures...

On April 18, Robbert Dijkgraaf, IAS Director and Leon Levy Professor hosted an "Ask Me Anything" session on the AskScience Reddit forum, coordinated in partnership with the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, a co-organizer with the IAS and MoMath of the National Math Festival, which will take place in Washington, D.C. on Saturday, May 4, 2019.

In writing about the first image of a black hole, released today by the Event Horizon Telescope Project, Nsikan Akpan of PBS NewsHour enlists the perspective of Robbert Dijkgraaf, Director and Leon Levy Professor, for insights on the mysterious nature of black holes, the importance of international collaborations, and why an image of a black hole matters.

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Project, which aims to capture the first-ever image of a black hole, will make a major announcement on Wednesday, April 10, at 9:00 a.m. EST (13:00 UTC) that can be viewed live from the player above.

With properties...

Thirty years ago, Martin Rees, a former Member in the School of Natural Sciences and current IAS Trustee, predicted that bright flares produced when a star is torn apart by a black hole—what astrophysicists now call tidal disruption events (TDEs)...