Supermassive black holes devour gas just like their petite counterparts
Regardless of size, all black holes experience similar accretion cycles, a new study finds.
Spencer Compton, Karna Morey, Tara Venkatadri, and Lily Zhang named 2021-22 Goldwater Scholars
Four MIT undergraduates whose research areas explore artificial intelligence, space, and climate change honored for their academic achievements.
Fast-spinning black holes narrow the search for dark matter particles
Certain ultralight bosons would be expected to put the brakes on black holes, but new results show no such slowdown.
Astronomers image magnetic fields at the edge of M87’s black hole
New image of M87 reveals how it looks in polarized light.
A technique to sift out the universe’s first gravitational waves
Identifying primordial ripples would be key to understanding the conditions of the early universe.
3 Questions: Hsin-Yu Chen on treading lightly when dating the universe
MIT postdoc finds the angle at which we view neutron star collisions could significantly impact age measurements.
Designing new mirror materials for better gravitational-wave detection
Nicholas Demos, a first-generation college graduate and MathWorks Fellow in MIT’s Kavli Institute, is improving our ability to listen to the cosmos.
Daniel Harlow awarded Packard Foundation Fellowship
Physics professor receives one of the most prestigious nongovernmental awards for early-career scientists.
Andrea Ghez ’87 wins a share of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics
MIT alumna and two others honored for discoveries in black hole physics.
The wobbling shadow of the M87* black hole
Analysis of Event Horizon Telescope observations from 2009 to 2017 reveals turbulent evolution of the M87* black hole image.
A “bang” in LIGO and Virgo detectors signals most massive gravitational-wave source yet
A binary black hole merger likely produced gravitational waves equal to the energy of eight suns.
An unexpected origin story for a lopsided black hole merger
Researchers suggest a novel process to explain the collision of a large black hole and a much smaller one.
Are we still listening to space?
Despite the planet’s seeming standstill, graduate students continue to use LIGO to identify astrophysical events.
In a first, astronomers watch a black hole’s corona disappear, then reappear
A colliding star may have triggered the drastic transformation.
Astronomers detect regular rhythm of radio waves, with origins unknown
Signal from 500 million light years away is the first periodic pattern of radio bursts detected.