The astronomers wondered if an extraterrestrial species might place orbiting platforms coated in something akin to solar panels around a black hole to absorb its energetic blasts. Despite being thought of as dark, black holes give off large amounts of energy as they feed on surrounding material, which heats up and radiates as light. ![]() In August, a team of astronomers in Taiwan suggested that technological aliens might be harvesting energy from black holes using hypothetical megastructures known as Dyson spheres that encircle a star. Scientists are not above speculating, as long as their conjectures are informed by relevant data. (Image credit: Marc Ward/Stocktrek Images/Getty) Read more: Scientists spot earliest-known supermassive black hole 'storm' Light echoes prove Einstein rightĪ conceptual illustration of a Dyson sphere. This suggests that galaxies and their black holes have an ancient and very tight bond. Furthermore, the powerful winds - traveling at roughly 1.1 million mph (1.8 million km/h) - move fast enough to propel material all over the galaxy and likely hinder star formation. This is the earliest detected example of galactic wind, which is burped out of supermassive black holes as they consume surrounding gas and dust. Research released in June showed high-speed winds being blown from a 13 billion-year-old galaxy, one nearly as old as the universe itself. But scientists still don't understand how a black hole affects its galactic host. (Image credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO))Īlmost every known galaxy has a supermassive black hole in its center, suggesting that there is a tight relationship between the two cosmic entities. The intense energy emanating from the black hole creates a huge flow of gas that blows away the interstellar matter that is the material for forming stars. Read more: Scientists catch 1st glimpse of a black hole swallowing a neutron star Early black hole blows a stormĪrtist’s illustration of a galactic wind driven by a supermassive black hole located in the center of a galaxy. The first involved a black hole with about six times the sun's mass devouring a neutron star one and a half times the sun's mass, while the second involved a black hole about nine times the mass of the sun and a neutron star about twice as massive as the sun. Both detections occurred in January 2020, roughly 10 days apart. While LIGO had previously seen hints of potential black hole-neutron star mergers, it wasn't until this year that two signals conclusively proved such mergers were happening. Along with black holes, neutron stars are one potential end result of a massive star's death, when the star explodes as a supernova and leaves behind a remnant. LIGO had a bevy of black hole findings to deliver in June, when researchers working with the facility announced that, for the first time, they were confident that they'd seen black holes merging with compact entities called neutron stars. Read more: Famous Stephen Hawking theory about black holes confirmed Black hole and neutron star merger According to quantum mechanics, black holes should be able to shrink and evaporate, and so it's unclear how to square that with Hawking's law that their surface area must also always increase. While the results were a victory for Hawking, they leave physicists with a head scratcher. The theorem states that it is impossible for the surface area of a black hole to decrease over time, a law Hawking derived using both Einstein's theory of general relativity as well as his understanding of entropy. In addition to providing amazing data, the findings help prove a 1971 conjecture from British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking known as the black hole area theorem. They found that the resulting black hole's surface area was larger than the first two combined. ![]() In June, researchers with the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) watched two gigantic black holes merge into a single entity and analyzed the ripples in the fabric of space-time called gravitational waves created as the black holes spiraled toward each other at high speed. The gravitational waves emitted by two black holes as they spiral into each other, shown in a simulation.
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