Black holes can teach us how to live our best lives
Black holes may seem like interstellar enigmas, but they hold some key lessons on how to move through the universe.
Albert Einstein
Goodbye fuzzy donut: The famous first black hole photo gets sharpened up
Scientists have created a new version of a historic black hole image that was first unveiled back in 2019. The central black nothingness now looks larger and darker.
When A City-Size Star Becomes A Black Hole's Lunch, The Universe Roils
It's a smackdown of one space monster by another: Scientists have made unprecedented observations of two black holes gobbling two neutron stars — among the weirdest space collisions ever detected.
Get A Glimpse: Total Solar Eclipse Set To Pass Over South Pacific, South America
The eclipse will happen on July 2. Its path of totality cuts across much of the south Pacific Ocean as well as Argentina and Chile — including a telescope that is one the world's largest.
Massive U.S. Machines That Hunt For Ripples In Space-Time Just Got An Upgrade
The twin sites in the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory are about to go back online. New hardware should make them able to sense more colliding black holes and other cosmic events.
Time Travel With Your Fridge?
If the history of thermodynamics can teach us anything, it is that modest entropy reversals have not taken us back in time at all. But it is more fun to think otherwise, says guest Jimena Canales.
Why Riding An Elevator Is Like Changing Gravity
If you time it just right, tossing a ball in the air as an elevator starts to move, the ball seems to hang in the air for a moment, like gravity had been canceled, says astrophysicist Adam Frank.
Einstein's Note On Happiness, Given To Bellboy In 1922, Fetches $1.6 Million
The physicist had just won the 1921 Nobel Prize when he scribbled his theory of happy living on a piece of hotel stationery and handed it to the courier at the Imperial Hotel Tokyo.
Astronomers Strike Gravitational Gold In Colliding Neutron Stars
In an astonishing discovery, astronomers used gravitational waves to locate two neutron stars smashing together. The collision created 200 Earth masses of pure gold, along with other elements.
Are We About To See A Black Hole?
A project called the Event Horizon Telescope is analyzing data taken earlier this year using interferometry — and we may be remarkably close to "seeing" a black hole, says astrophysicist Adam Frank.