Instead, it seems to be a gas cloud moving at huge speeds right in the direction of the black hole. But what really rang along bells was the way it had changed shape. We see that this gas cloud as it moves closer and closer to the black hole, is gett...
It was a stunning discovery. After a quest lasting decade, Donald Lynden-Bell had been proved right. Here indeed, just where he had predicted, was a super massive black hole. But in the last year, the quest to find and understand black holes has sudd...
If there's a black hole at the center of our galaxy, that's gonna force these objects that are really close to the black hole to move much faster than they would move if there were no black holes. So the first thing you wanted to see is there are ver...
Just as I arrived at UCLA with my first faculty position, everything was falling into place in terms of the ability to answer this question at the centre of our galaxy. The telescopes were getting bigger so you had the due ability to see fine details...
It's like trying to pick out an individual inside the middle of a busy city, with lights and cars, and things happening all around them. But that wasn't the only problem. Vast, swirling clouds of dust and gas prevent visible light from the centre of...
At last, astronomers had a map of our galaxy. A panorama of the Milky Way, it would never be possible to see from Planet Earth. 27,000 light-years from our solar system is the centre of our galaxy. If we were ever going to have a chance of seeing a b...
But if you look carefully, stars aren't spread smoothly across the whole sky. They are gathered together into a band that loops around the sky which we call the Milky Way. That bright strip across the sky with its extraordinary abundance of stars and...
It suggested a baffling paradox that quasars are really shining black holes, capable of emitting the energy of entire galaxies. But Lynden-Bell then went further. I predicted that there would be these massive objects found in the nearby galaxies. He...
The mystery of what could count for the quasars' extraordinary brightness was the hot topic in astronomy during the 1960s. As astronomers began to grapple with the new enigmatic objects that had been found by the radio telescopes, one astronomer, kee...
But that is not the only surprise. People began to realize that these tiny star-like things or they looked like stars are actually putting out as much energy as a hundred of galaxies. And they didnt look like a galaxy at all. The paradox was how some...
But if watching matter tumble over the edge of a black hole might now be possible, it is only because of the efforts of a generation of astronomers to wrestle these dark dragons of the cosmos into the realms of scientific reality. As is often the cas...
Theres nothing anywhere near as extreme as a black hole. The disturbing truth about black holes is that there are boundary between the known universe and the place that would forever lie beyond the reach of science. They are in an anomaly of gravity...
High above your head, in the centre of our Milky Way Galaxy, a violent drama is about to unfold. Our super-massive black hole is getting ready to have dinner. As a gas cloud three times the size of the Earth, its caught in its gravitational hold. Acr...
Nothing is more seductive than the unknown, nothing more compelling than a place of danger that lies beyond normal comprehension. Of all those places, perhaps the strangest of all are black holes. They are an exit point from the Universe, hidden trap...
I call this piece Explosion 753. From A for audit to Y for yelling and everything in between, the Mythbusters A to Z of explosions has been a blast. And with just one letter left, you might say that the guys are going to end with a bang. Well if X is...
