With all we’ve learned about black holes over the past few decades, there are still many mysteries to solve.īlack holes are expected to form when a massive star dies. Galaxies where the black holes are active are called quasars. Most of the time they are inactive, but when they are active and eat stars and gas, the region close to the black hole can outshine the entire galaxy that hosts them. In particular, I’ve focused on the supermassive black holes that lurk at the center of galaxies. I’ve been studying black holes for over 30 years. And black holes are places where the laws of physics are obliterated. Also, the massive black holes seen at the center of all galaxies have insatiable appetites. If you fell into a black hole left over when a star died, you would be shredded. Andrea Ghez and Reinhard Genzel shared the other half for showing that a massive black hole sits at the center of our galaxy.īlack holes are scary for three reasons.
Half of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Roger Penrose for his mathematical work showing that black holes are an inescapable consequence of Einstein’s theory of gravity. Halloween is a time to be haunted by ghosts, goblins and ghouls, but nothing in the universe is scarier than a black hole.īlack holes – regions in space where gravity is so strong that nothing can escape – are a hot topic in the news these days.
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