Scientists have now discovered the secrets behind the magical disappearance of some of the fish that lurk in some of the deepest parts of the ocean. These “ultra black” fish are among the darkest creatures ever found, evolving to camouflage themselves against predators, even without sunlight. According to a study …
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Black holes don’t shine; in fact, they are famous for doing the opposite. But if they are actively devouring material from the space around them, that material can burn like a trillion X-ray suns. And for the first time, astronomers have now seen that mysteriously extinguished fire, before gradually returning …
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A faint, ghostly galaxy 10 million light-years away has delivered one of black hole astronomy’s holy grails. At the bottom is a black hole that appears to belong to an elusive middleweight class of intermediate-mass black holes, a discovery that could help us understand how some of the more massive …
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A 50-year theoretical process to extract energy from a spinning black hole finally has experimental verification. Using an analogue of the required components, physicists have shown that the Penrose process is indeed a plausible mechanism for extracting some of that rotational energy, if we could ever develop the means. That …
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In August last year, the LIGO and Virgo collaborations made a gravitational wave detection, the first of its kind, in what appeared to be a black hole swallowing a neutron star. Now LIGO has confirmed the event, giving it the name of GW190814. And it appears that the neutron star …
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