Quasars are extremely luminous cores of distant galaxies, powered by supermassive black holes that consume as much as 100 Earth masses of gas and dust per minute.

Mapping the universe's 1.3 million quasars

Quasars form the core of active galaxies where supermassive black holes devour unimaginable amounts of matter. You can see a map of all 1.3 million of these objects with this 3D map. It was assembled with data from the Gaia spacecraft and shows how the spread of dark matter across space matches that described by the Cosmic Microwave Background.

More than 40 quintillion black holes are estimated to exist in the universe, including about 100 million in the Milky Way, each with masses up to hundreds of times that of the sun.

The deaths of massive stars and the mergers of neutron stars and black holes can produce gamma-ray bursts—jets of particles moving in opposite directions at near-light speed that comprise the universe's most powerful explosions.

Neutron stars, the remains of some massive stars after they explode in a supernova, are the densest directly observable objects in the universe.

Why starquakes may explain various phenomena associated with neutron stars

Fast radio bursts—repeated millisecond-long pulses of enormous energy from neutron stars—are emitted with a timing that resembles the earthquakes and aftershocks seen on Earth when geological activity releases energy from within the planet. Although pulsars should gradually spin more slowly as they lose energy from emitting jets of radiation, sudden increases may result from interior matter moving during starquakes.

Black holes are formed from massive stars collapsing under their own gravity

This creates a region where spacetime curves infinitely, known as a singularity. Black holes' intense mass and energy allow them to trap light, distort time and space, and present challenges with reconciling Einstein's theory with quantum mechanics.

Stars hold off gravitational collapse with the energy produced in nuclear reactions in their core, but when massive stars run out of fuel for these reactions, runaway collapse can produce a black hole.

Black holes 101

At the center of our galaxy, a supermassive black hole churns. Learn about the types of black holes, how they form, and how scientists discovered these invisible, yet extraordinary objects in our universe. This three-minute video from National Geographic tutors the viewer on the basics regarding the universe's most mysterious residents.

Black holes can disrupt the formation of galaxies

A team of astronomers in Munich detected a gas cloud being stretched and torn apart by the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, preventing matter from coalescing into new stars. Energy released from siphoned gas produced warm winds that may also prevent surrounding gas from coalescing.

If particle accelerators did create black holes by packing tremendous energy into a small volume, then trillions would be created in Earth's atmosphere daily by cosmic rays.

Research suggests that about 1% of all matter in the universe is locked inside black holes, millions of which are likely to lurk undetected near us in space.

Research suggests that the small red dots in images of deep space captured by the James Webb Space Telescope since 2022 are black hole stars—black holes surrounded by enormous clouds of gas.

The first image of Sagittarius A*—the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy—was revealed in 2022, almost 50 years after its discovery.

The hypothetical matter that neutron stars' cores may contain, including strange quarks

Models of the extreme pressures and energies in neutron stars suggest conditions resembling those believed to have existed within a fraction of a second after the Big Bang. In these environments, the quarks that make up protons and neutrons in trios may instead form pairs that combine to form one quantum object. (Some readers may experience a paywall.)

If dark energy is weakening, the universe may collapse under its own gravity

Scientists using the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) analyzed light from 15 million galaxies and quasars to identify that the universe's accelerated expansion is diminishing. If this continues, the universe might reverse course and collapse in as little as 20 billion years.

Invisible to direct observation, scientists determined the object at the center of the Milky Way—Sagittarius A*—was a supermassive black hole based on the orbits of fast-moving stars in the area.

Dark stars are hypothetical stars that would have existed in the early universe

Primarily composed of visible matter, this celestial object would also contain a significant amount of dark matter that would annihilate with itself, converting its mass into energy. This energy would prevent the star from collapsing under its own gravity and from triggering nuclear fusion until its dark matter fuel was exhausted.

Explaining pulsars, the cosmic clocks and lighthouses of the universe

As of 2023, over 3,000 of these rapidly rotating neutron stars have been discovered, which contain magnetic fields along which energized particles accelerate and emit light, including X-rays, gamma rays, visible light, and, most commonly, radio waves. The fastest of these, PSR J1748–2446ad, rotates 716 times per second, meaning its surface equator moves at about 24% the speed of light.

Attempts to 'fix' black hole physics have led scientists to theorize new types

Along with their spin and charge, mass is used to categorize black holes as supermassive, intermediate, or stellar-mass. However, ongoing research suggests various additional types may exist, including primordials that formed one second into the universe's birth, fuzzballs—tangles of vibrating strings—and gravastars, which have a shell of dense matter around repulsive vacuum energy.

Cosmic rays are thought to be accelerated to near the speed of light by repeatedly bouncing across shockwaves produced by high-energy cosmic events, such as supernovae.

The mysterious origins of the universe’s biggest black holes

Think you know everything about black holes? You might be surprised. Thought of as massive vacuum cleaners sucking up everything in their cosmic path, black holes actually accrete matter at an incredibly slow pace. Yet, some black holes existed when the universe was only a few billion years young. Learn more in this BBC report.

What are pulsars?

Pulsars are neutron stars created as part of stellar evolution and emit radiation beams visible from Earth. These beams pulse like a lighthouse's light due to the star's rotation, creating periodic high-energy emissions. Pulsars were first discovered as radio sources; it was also discovered they emit gamma rays. NASA uses its Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope to retrieve and analyze data from pulsars.

Nearly 50 years before the first observational evidence, a soldier fighting on the Eastern Front in World War I found a mathematical solution to Einstein's equations that suggested the existence of black holes.

Most of the observable universe's volume consists of voids and supervoids—enormous regions of space with little to no galaxies, stars, or light.

Hawking radiation shows black holes slowly evaporate through quantum effects.

Hawking radiation is Stephen Hawking's theoretical prediction that black holes emit radiation and eventually evaporate. Applied to known black holes, their radiation is so weak that it would take vastly longer than the current age of the universe for them to disappear.

When they merge, black holes release multiple solar masses of energy

The energy emanates outward in the form of gravitational waves, which can be detected at observatories like LIGO. After merging, it is impossible to determine the characteristics of the two black holes that merged to create it.

Due to dark energy, the universe is expected to end as a dark, sparse place

While the sun is expected to continue shining for another five billion years, the expansion of the universe will cause nearby stars and galaxies to become ever more distant, until they are too far to observe. Once the last old, red, dim stars cool into darkness after trillions of years, the universe will settle into a state of eternal, dark emptiness.

Fritz Zwicky predicted the existence of dark matter and neutron stars

The former resulted from analyzing the motion of galaxies in the Coma Cluster, a subset of the approximately 30,000 galaxies he cataloged during his life. When hypothesizing an origin for observed high-energy particles called cosmic rays, Zwicky and colleague Walter Baade thought they could come from exploding stars, or supernovae—a term he coined—which would leave behind a collapsed star made entirely of neutrons.

Watch an artist's impression of two neutron stars merging in a kilonova explosion

Such an event produces enough light to briefly outshine an entire galaxy and to produce characteristic gravitational wave and gamma-ray signals. On August 17, 2017, these signals were captured by the LIGO–Virgo and Fermi/INTEGRAL observatories, respectively, from a kilonova about 130 million light-years away.

Despite fears of creating black holes, the Large Hadron Collider produces collisions with energies of 13.6 trillion electronvolts, about one million times smaller than the energy needed to create the lightest possible black holes.

What does quark-gluon plasma have in common with tap water?

Quark-gluon plasma is a state of matter that formed shortly, very shortly, after the big bang. At one time filling the universe, scientists describe quark-gluon plasma as being similar to tap water, but only in the manner that such matter flows. Incredibly hot upon its emergence, it swiftly cooled and began forming the early building blocks of the universe.

Within ALICE—A Large Ion Collider Experiment—at the Large Hadron Collider, scientists have created quark-gluon plasma—an exotic form of matter present in the moments after the Big Bang.

In 1997, the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory identified 'positron geysers'—fountains of antimatter particles—emerging from near the center of the Milky Way.

Released in 2024, the polarized image of Sagittarius A* shows that the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way exhibits powerful, spiraling magnetic fields.

Dark energy causes 97% of the galaxies to move faster than light

Although special relativity prevents objects from moving faster than the speed of light, the expansion of the universe, which increases with distance between objects, produces observed superluminal motion. This does not violate the theory because galaxies are moving with the expanding space, rather than through it.

Through gravitational redshift, light loses energy as it leaves a massive object

Just as one becomes exhausted as they walk up a flight of stairs against gravity, light is predicted to lose energy as it travels out of a gravitational well created by an object warping spacetime. This is observable through a decrease in the frequency of light toward longer, redder wavelengths.

Black holes do not 'suck' matter and energy in like a vacuum cleaner

Despite its immense magnitude, the force of gravity exerted by black holes acts in the same way as provided by stars and planets, allowing objects to maintain stable orbits around them. Even in cases where tidal forces and friction cause objects to change their orbit and fall towards a black hole, they are more likely to glance by, be whipped around, and get ejected rather than absorbed.

Watch a simulation of a collapsing star becoming a black hole

When a massive star can no longer release enough energy through fusion in its core to fight off gravitational collapse, the dense core collapses first, producing an event horizon that traps light within it, including some light produced within the star at the time of collapse. As more material falls into the growing event horizon, the star will appear to eclipse itself from the inside.

Explaining 'impossible' black holes

When stars collapse, the black holes they form can have the mass of either 50 suns or over 120—but current models claim strongly that no black hole should have a mass that falls in between that range. But in 2019, gravitational wave observatories detected two within it: one at 66 solar masses, the other at 85. The discovery disrupted established science and left researchers questioning the Standard Model of physics.

Universes with stronger dark energy may be more common than ours

Research shows that while universes with slightly weaker dark energy form stars more efficiently, universes with stronger dark energy are statistically more common and can still support star formation. This challenges the anthropic logic that our universe must have ideal conditions for life because we exist to observe them.

Type Ia supernovae—explosions caused by the remnants of low-mass stars being reignited—brighten and dim so consistently that they are used as cosmic rulers to measure distances across the universe.

Some cosmic rays possess energies as high as 100,000,000 teraelectron volts—more than 10 million times the energy of particles accelerated in the Large Hadron Collider.

The rare exoplanets orbiting distant pulsars

Pulsars are ridiculously volatile, massive, and super-dense. These objects are spread out around the universe, and their spinning magnetic fields blast out radioactive pulses. Rarely, some have planets orbiting them. There's not much hope for life there—pulsars emit regular deadly radiation—but they're still fascinating from a scientific perspective. This article further explores these amazing exoplanets.

What lies inside a black hole remains one of the universe's greatest mysteries

At the center of black holes is a theoretical point of infinite density called a singularity. Alternatively, one theory suggests a black hole's core could form a Planck star—a mind-bogglingly tiny object just a trillionth trillionth trillionth of a meter in size.

The universe's expansion is accelerating due to a mysterious force called dark energy

Astronomers discovered in the late 1990s that galaxies move apart faster over time, contradicting expectations that gravity should slow cosmic expansion. This prompted the revival of the "cosmological constant," a form of repulsive gravity first proposed by Albert Einstein.

View a timeline of the universe's major events, according to the Big Bang model.

TON 618, the largest black hole ever detected, has the mass of 66 billion suns

The supermassive black hole is 18 billion light-years away and emits radiation with the brightness of 100 trillion stars. It is so massive that light would take an entire week to travel from its edge to its center.

View the Crab Nebula in different wavelengths of light to identify the structures surrounding the neutron star—a stellar remnant composed of tightly-packed neutrons.

The interaction of quantum fields with black hole curvatures makes Hawking radiation

The classic explanation of Hawking radiation depicts virtual photons emitted from a black hole's event horizon. A more accurate explanation involves null geodesics, Bogoliubov transformations, and scattered quantum field nodes to explain the emission of thermal radiation.

Once called 'aces,' quarks are fundamental pieces of matter that combine to create over 100 known composite particles, including the proton and neutron.