Black Hole and related Recent Stories

General relativity describes a black hole as a region of empty space with a point-like singularity at the center and an event horizon at the outer edge, the description changes when the effects of quantum mechanics are taken into account. Research indicates that, rather than holding captured matter forever, black holes may slowly leak a form of thermal energy called Hawking radiation and may well have a finite life. The as yet unknown theory of quantum gravity is believed to give the fully correct description of black holes.[…]

• Astronomers Provide New Insights Into Massive Black Hole At Center Of The Milky Way And Surrounding Region: UCLA astronomers can determine, for the first time, orbits of massive young stars located a few light months from the enormous black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy; stars that hold an imprint of how they were born. The origin of young stars at the center of our galaxy has puzzled astronomers, but the orbits may be the key to unlocking the mystery, UCLA astronomy graduate student Jessica Lu reported today at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Washington, D.C.[1]
• Astronomers Find Evidence For Tens Of Thousands Of Black Holes: UCLA astronomers present the first evidence that tens of thousands of black holes are orbiting the monstrous black hole at the center of the Milky Way, 26,000 light years away.[2]
• Chandra Sees Remarkable Eclipse Of Black Hole: A remarkable eclipse of a supermassive black hole and the hot gas disk around it has been observed with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. This eclipse has allowed two key predictions about the effects of supermassive black holes to be tested.[3]
• Stars Forming Just Beyond Black Hole's Grasp At Galactic Center: The center of the Milky Way presents astronomers with a paradox: It holds young stars, but no one is sure how those stars got there. The galactic center is wracked with powerful gravitational tides stirred by a 4 million solar-mass black hole. Those tides should rip apart molecular clouds that act as stellar nurseries, preventing stars from forming in place. Yet the alternative -- stars falling inward after forming elsewhere -- should be a rare occurrence.[4]