Black holes

Dwarf galaxies weren’t supposed to have big black holes. Their surprise discovery has revealed clues about how the universe’s biggest black holes could have formed.

Celia Escamilla-Rivera is combining large data sets with supercomputers to test general relativity against its little-known competitors.

The five-decade-old paradox — long thought key to linking quantum theory with Einstein’s theory of gravity — is falling to a new generation of thinkers. Netta Engelhardt is leading the way.

Supermassive black holes emit jets of white-hot plasma that stretch thousands of light-years across the cosmos. For the first time, researchers have identified what’s creating these jets.

A mathematical shortcut for analyzing black hole collisions works even in cases where it shouldn’t. As astronomers use it to search for new classes of hidden black holes, others wonder: Why?

Ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays twist and turn on their way to Earth, which has made it nearly impossible to identify the colossal monsters that create them.

Black holes seemed to come only in sizes small and XXL. A new search strategy has uncovered a black hole of “intermediate” mass, raising hopes of more to come.

The zoo of spontaneously emerging particlelike entities known as quasiparticles has grown quickly and become more and more exotic. Here are a few of the most curious and potentially useful examples.

A supernova-like explosion dubbed the Camel appears to be the result of a newborn black hole eating a star from the inside out.