A black hole is a massive, compact astronomical object so dense that its gravity prevents anything from escaping, even light. Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass will form a black hole. [3] The boundary of no escape is called the event horizon.

Sep 8, 2020 · A black hole is an astronomical object with a gravitational pull so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape it. A black hole’s “surface,” called its event horizon, defines the boundary where the velocity needed to escape exceeds the speed of …

Apr 19, 2025 · Black hole, cosmic body of extremely intense gravity from which nothing, not even light, can escape. It can be formed by the death of a massive star wherein its core gravitationally collapses inward upon itself, compressing to a point of …

6 days ago · Astronomers tracked the orbits of several stars near the center of the Milky Way to prove it houses a supermassive black hole, a discovery that won the 2020 Nobel Prize. When very massive objects accelerate through space, they create ripples in the fabric of space-time called gravitational waves.

May 6, 2022 · Black holes are real — and they're some of the most mysterious objects in space. Discover what they are, how they form, and why they captivate scientists.

Sep 23, 2019 · A black hole is an extremely dense object in space from which no light can escape. While black holes are mysterious and exotic, they are also a key consequence of how gravity works: When a lot of mass gets compressed into a small enough space, the resulting object rips the very fabric of space and time, becoming what is called a singularity.

Black holes are some of the most fascinating and mind-bending objects in the cosmos. The very thing that characterizes a black hole also makes it hard to study: its intense gravity. All the mass in a black hole is concentrated in a tiny region, surrounded by a …

3 days ago · Linda Smith from the Space Telescope Science Institute, a co-author of the study, added that the latest discovery marks the first-ever "compelling clue" that a black hole may be present in M83.

Apr 10, 2019 · A black hole is a dense, compact object whose gravitational pull is so strong that – within a certain distance of it – nothing can escape, not even light. Black holes are thought to result from the collapse of very massive stars at the ends of their evolution.

Black holes are extremely dense pockets of matter, objects of such incredible mass and miniscule volume that they drastically warp the fabric of space-time. Anything that passes too close, from a wandering star to a photon of light, gets captured.