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Key People:

Reinhard Genzel
Kip Thorne
Andrea Ghez
Stephen Hawking
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

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accretion disk
event horizon
Kerr black hole
singularity
Penrose diagram

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What is the structure of a black hole?
What are some examples of black holes?
Uncover insight into the black hole
Everything in Space in a 25-Minute Quiz
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A black hole is a cosmic body of extremely intense gravity from which even light cannot escape. Black holes usually cannot be observed directly, but they can be “observed” by the effects of their enormous gravitational fields on nearby matter.
The singularity constitutes the center of a black hole, hidden by the object’s “surface,” the event horizon. Inside the event horizon, the escape velocity exceeds the speed of light so that not even rays of light can escape into space.
A black hole can be formed by the death of a massive star. At the end of a massive star's life, the core becomes unstable and collapses in upon itself, and the star’s outer layers are blown away. The crushing weight of constituent matter falling in from all sides compresses the dying star to a point of zero volume and infinite density called the singularity.
One example of a black hole is can be found in Cygnus X-1, a binary X-ray system consisting of a blue supergiant and an invisible companion 14.8 times the mass of the Sun. Another example is Sagittarius A*, a supermassive black hole that exists at the centre of the Milky Way Galaxy.
black hole , cosmic body of extremely intense gravity from which nothing, not even light , can escape. A black hole can be formed by the death of a massive star . When such a star has exhausted the internal thermonuclear fuels in its core at the end of its life , the core becomes unstable and gravitationally collapses inward upon itself, and the star’s outer layers are blown away. The crushing weight of constituent matter falling in from all sides compresses the dying star to a point of zero volume and infinite density called the singularity .
Details of the structure of a black hole are calculated from Albert Einstein ’s general theory of relativity . The singularity constitutes the centre of a black hole and is hidden by the object’s “surface,” the event horizon . Inside the event horizon the escape velocity (i.e., the velocity required for matter to escape from the gravitational field of a cosmic object) exceeds the speed of light , so that not even rays of light can escape into space. The radius of the event horizon is called the Schwarzschild radius , after the German astronomer Karl Schwarzschild , who in 1916 predicted the existence of collapsed stellar bodies that emit no radiation. The size of the Schwarzschild radius is proportional to the mass of the collapsing star. For a black hole with a mass 10 times as great as that of the Sun , the radius would be 30 km (18.6 miles).
Only the most massive stars—those of more than three solar masses—become black holes at the end of their lives. Stars with a smaller amount of mass evolve into less compressed bodies, either white dwarfs or neutron stars .
Black holes usually cannot be observed directly on account of both their small size and the fact that they emit no light. They can be “observed,” however, by the effects of their enormous gravitational fields on nearby matter. For example, if a black hole is a member of a binary star system, matter flowing into it from its companion becomes intensely heated and then radiates X-rays copiously before entering the event horizon of the black hole and disappearing forever. One of the component stars of the binary X-ray system Cygnus X-1 is a black hole. Discovered in 1971 in the constellation Cygnus, this binary consists of a blue supergiant and an invisible companion 14.8 times the mass of the Sun that revolve about one another in a period of 5.6 days.
Some black holes apparently have nonstellar origins. Various astronomers have speculated that large volumes of interstellar gas collect and collapse into supermassive black holes at the centres of quasars and galaxies . A mass of gas falling rapidly into a black hole is estimated to give off more than 100 times as much energy as is released by the identical amount of mass through nuclear fusion . Accordingly, the collapse of millions or billions of solar masses of interstellar gas under gravitational force into a large black hole would account for the enormous energy output of quasars and certain galactic systems.
One such supermassive black hole, Sagittarius A* , exists at the centre of the Milky Way Galaxy . Observations of stars orbiting the position of Sagittarius A* demonstrate the presence of a black hole with a mass equivalent to more than 4,000,000 Suns. (For these observations, American astronomer Andrea Ghez and German astronomer Reinhard Genzel were awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize for Physics.) Supermassive black holes have been detected in other galaxies as well. In 2017 the Event Horizon Telescope obtained an image of the supermassive black hole at the centre of the M87 galaxy. That black hole has a mass equal to six and a half billion Suns but is only 38 billion km (24 billion miles) across. It was the first black hole to be imaged directly. The existence of even larger black holes, each with a mass equal to 10 billion Suns, can be inferred from the energetic effects on gas swirling at extremely high velocities around the centre of NGC 3842 and NGC 4889, galaxies near the Milky Way.
The existence of another kind of nonstellar black hole was proposed by the British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking . According to Hawking’s theory, numerous tiny primordial black holes, possibly with a mass equal to or less than that of an asteroid , might have been created during the big bang , a state of extremely high temperatures and density in which the universe originated 13.8 billion years ago. These so-called mini black holes , like the more massive variety, lose mass over time through Hawking radiation and disappear. If certain theories of the universe that require extra dimensions are correct, the Large Hadron Collider could produce significant numbers of mini black holes.

What Can We Learn from the Universe's Baby Picture?

This animation of supercomputer data takes you to the inner zone of the accretion disk of a stellar-mass black hole. The event horizon is the boundary where all trajectories, including those of light, must go inward. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/J. Schnittman, J. Krolik (JHU) and S. Noble (RIT)

This animation shows orbits of stars near the Milky Way’s central black hole based on images taken between 1995 and 2018. Using these stellar orbits, we can estimate the mass of the supermassive black hole to be 4 million solar masses. Credit: Keck/UCLA Galactic Center Group

Using the Event Horizon Telescope, scientists obtained an image of the black hole at the center of galaxy M87 outlined by hot gas swirling around it under the influence of strong gravity near its event horizon. Credit: Event Horizon Telescope collaboration et al.

In this illustration of MAXI J1820+070, a black hole pulls material off a neighboring star and into an accretion disk. Above the disk is a region called the corona. Credit: Aurore Simonnet and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

This visualization shows gravitational waves emitted by two black holes of nearly equal mass as they spiral together and merge. Credit: NASA/Bernard J. Kelly (Goddard and Univ. of Maryland Baltimore County), Chris Henze (Ames) and Tim Sandstrom (CSC Government Solutions LLC)

Two galaxies collide and merge in this simulation of the formation of the galaxy known as "The Mice." Credit: Josh Barnes (University of Hawaii) and John Hibbard (National Radio Astronomy Observatory)

When one star in the sky appears to pass nearly in front of another, the light rays of the background source star become bent due to the warped space-time around the foreground star. This star is a virtual magnifying glass, amplifying the brightness of the background source star. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/CI Lab

NASA’s Webb delivered the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe so far.

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Using data from NASA’s NICER, scientists discovered the matter in neutron stars is less squeezable than physicists thought.

NASA’s Roman will use its microlensing survey to provide the best opportunity yet to definitively detect solitary small black holes.

For the first time, scientists mapped out the invisible magnetic fields pulsing through Centaurus A using infrared light.

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Not all appears as it would seem in the Whirlpool galaxy.

An international team of astronomers discovered a cosmic equivalent to Yellow Stone's Old Faithful geyser.

SPHEREx officially entered Phase C, which means the agency has approved preliminary design plans for the observatory.

New simulations show that NASA’s Roman mission will be able to reveal myriad rogue planets.

Astronomers detected elusive pulsation patterns in young, rapidly rotating stars thanks to data from NASA’s TESS.

Two NASA missions contributed unprecedented observations of a 2018 nova outburst.

After more than 16 years studying the universe in infrared light, NASA's Spitzer mission has come to an end.

Astrophysicists are redrawing the textbook image of pulsars thanks to NASA’s NICER.

NASA’s NICER detected a sudden spike of X-rays caused by a massive thermonuclear flash on the surface of a pulsar.

For the first time, NASA’s TESS watched a black hole tear apart a star.

NuSTAR’s observations of an ultraluminous X-ray source offer possible explanations for these mysterious objects.

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Black holes are some of the most bizarre and fascinating objects in the cosmos. Astronomers want to study lots of them, but there’s one big problem – black holes are invisible! Since they don’t emit any light, it’s pretty tough to find them lurking in the inky void of space. Fortunately, there are a few different ways we can “see” black holes indirectly by watching how they affect their surroundings.
If you’ve spent some time stargazing, you know what a calm, peaceful place our universe can be. But did you know that a monster is hiding right in the heart of our Milky Way galaxy? Astronomers noticed stars zipping superfast around something we can’t see at the center of the galaxy, about 10 million miles per hour! The stars must be circling a supermassive black hole. No other object would have strong enough gravity to keep them from flying off into space.
Two astrophysicists won half of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2020 for revealing this dark secret. The black hole is truly monstrous, weighing about four million times as much as our Sun! And it seems our home galaxy is no exception – our Hubble Space Telescope has revealed that the hubs of most galaxies contain supermassive black holes .
Technology has advanced enough that we’ve been able to spot one of these supermassive black holes in a nearby galaxy. In 2019, astronomers took the first-ever picture of a black hole in a galaxy called M87, which is about 55 million light-years away. They used an international network of radio telescopes called the Event Horizon Telescope . And in 2022, they used the same network of telescopes to reveal the black hole at the center of the Milky Way .
In the image, we can see some light from hot gas surrounding a dark shape. While we still can’t see the black hole itself, we can see the “shadow” it casts on the bright backdrop.
Black holes can come in a smaller variety, too. When a massive star runs out of the fuel it uses to shine, it collapses in on itself. These lightweight or “stellar-mass” black holes are a few to hundreds of times as massive as the Sun. They’re scattered throughout the galaxy in the same places where we find stars, since that’s how they began their lives. Some of them started out with a companion star, and so far that’s been our best clue to find them.
Some black holes steal material from their companion star. As the material falls onto the black hole, it gets superhot and lights up in X-rays . The first confirmed black hole astronomers discovered, called Cygnus X-1 , was found this way.
If a star comes too close to a supermassive black hole, the effect is even more dramatic! Instead of just siphoning material from the star like a smaller black hole would do, a supermassive black hole will completely tear the star apart into a stream of gas. This is called a tidal disruption event .
But what if two companion stars both turn into black holes? They may eventually collide with each other to form a larger black hole, sending ripples through space-time – the fabric of the cosmos!
These ripples, called gravitational waves , travel across space at the speed of light. The waves that reach us are extremely weak because space-time is really stiff.
Three scientists received the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics for using LIGO to observe gravitational waves that were sent out from colliding stellar-mass black holes. Though gravitational waves are hard to detect, they offer
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