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Our intrigue with black holes is quite rational; their irreversible boundary, known as the “event horizon,” ensnares light, implying that no signal can ever emerge from within a black hole to the outside. Consequently, the boundary of the black hole is a section of space and time that exclusively prohibits intruders. This sets the stage for enigma. And we all appreciate a mystery, especially scientists.
This is made more complex by the fact that at the core of the black hole exists a singularity, where all our physical laws cease to function, rendering even our most sophisticated and significant achievements in physics incomprehensible. Approach the event horizon of a black hole on a one-way quest for knowledge, and even if you come back, your distant peers won’t be able to acknowledge you. Due to the dramatic warping of time and space at that juncture, you’ll endlessly appear frozen at the border of the event horizon.
Nevertheless, this does not imply that we are entirely ignorant about these cosmic giants. Each year, humanity uncovers more insights regarding black holes, some astonishing, some comforting (they serve as ideal laboratories for testing and validating general relativity, our foremost theory of gravity), and some simply bizarre.
The previous 12 months have not been an exception to this evolution. Space.com is honored to navigate you through the most significant black hole revelations of 2024.
1) Fastest-growing black hole devours a sun daily!
As Christmas 2024 transitions to New Year 2025, many will contemplate diets to counteract the impacts of our seasonal bingeing. In February 2024, astronomers identified a distant black hole that epitomizes excess.
This supermassive black hole is located so far from Earth that it has taken 12 billion years for the light emanating from the matter surrounding it to reach us. It is visible near the beginning of time because this monster, with a mass between 17 billion and 19 billion times that of the sun, fuels the brightest quasar ever observed by humanity.
Sustaining this emission demands that the black hole consumes a mass equivalent to that of the sun in gas and dust every single day!
“We have identified the fastest-growing black hole known to this point. It possesses a mass of 17 billion suns and devours just over a sun each day,” stated Christian Wolf, team leader and astronomer from the Australian National University in a statement. “This makes it the most luminous entity in the known universe.”
This quasar, designated as J0529-4351, is so bright that if it were positioned next to the sun, it would shine 500 trillion times brighter than our star! We might as well take down the Christmas decorations early.
Read more: Brightest quasar observed is powered by black hole that consumes a ‘sun a day’
2) First binary stars detected around the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole
Binary stars are fairly prevalent, with over half of all stars expected to share their space with a companion. So, you might be astonished to find the identification of a binary star system on this list (especially since it is meant to be about black holes, and this is merely entry two, gosh).
However, this finding isn’t so much about what astronomers uncovered; it’s regarding where they found it. In mid-December 2024, scientists discovered a system of binary stars, named D9, orbiting each other in close proximity to Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), the supermassive black hole residing at the center of the Milky Way.
This is remarkable because the massive gravitational pull of Sgr A*, which possesses a mass approximately 4.2 million times that of the sun, alongside that of other supermassive black holes, was presumed too destructive to permit binary stars to exist in the vicinity.
Despite D9 being relatively young at merely 2.7 million years old (when compared to our 4.6 billion-year-old sun, of course) and its discoverers anticipating that the two stars will soon merge, this discovery indicates that the surroundings of supermassive black holes may not be as chaotic as previously thought.
This implies that there might be a chance for planets to form, even if only briefly, around the high-velocity stars propelled by the gravity of Sgr A*.
“Black holes are not as devastating as we once believed,” stated Florian Peißker, lead author of the research and scientist from the University of Cologne in a statement. “It seems likely that detecting planets in the galactic center is merely a matter of time.”
Read more: Astronomers discover first binary stars orbiting the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way
3) First ‘black hole triple’ found
Clearly, for some stars orbiting black holes, “two is company,” but in October 2024, astronomers were surprised to find that some stars in triple systems permit a companion to linger even after it has transitioned into a black hole.
This insight was achieved through the discovery of the first “black hole triple,” consisting of a black hole eagerly feeding on a neighboring star while also being orbited by a more distant, cautious star.
The system V404 Cygni, located within the Milky Way about 8,000 light-years from Earth, was already familiar to astronomers and had been thoroughly examined, but it was only this year that scientists associated the more distant star with the system.
The discovery is significant because it suggests that black holes can develop in a manner that is less violent and doesn’t “kick”…
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away” more loosely tethered remote stars akin to the supernova detonations typically associated with the formation of black holes would.
“This system is incredibly thrilling for the advancement of black hole development, and it also prompts inquiries into the existence of additional triples out there,” Kevin Burdge from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) expressed in an email to Space.com. “The fact that this star remains bound is unexpected as it suggests it experienced a low-energy birth kick.
“In general, it’s not astonishing that black holes can exist in triples since a substantial portion of gigantic stars are part of triples, but the surprising element is that this system retained its triple configuration after the formation of the black hole.”
Read more: 1st triple black hole system identified in ‘fortunate coincidence’
4) Elusive intermediate-mass black holes reveal themselves
So far on this list, we’ve discussed supermassive black holes ranging from millions to billions of solar masses and stellar-mass black holes, which have a considerably narrower mass range of 10 to 1,000 solar masses. Nonetheless, there must be some black holes existing between these two categories.
Indeed, they exist. Intermediate-mass black holes are believed to be situated within this mass void, serving as a “missing link” that aids certain black holes in achieving supermassive status. The term “missing” is appropriate because this category of black hole has proven to be frustratingly elusive.
In July of 2024, utilizing the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers observed what they believe to be a missing link black hole in Omega Centauri, the remnants of a galaxy that was long ago consumed by the Milky Way.
This act of cosmic consumption left this intermediate-mass black hole without the sustenance required to surpass its mass of 8,200 times that of the sun, effectively “freezing it in time.”
“Located roughly 18,000 light-years away, this represents the closest known instance of a massive black hole,” remarked team member and Max Planck Institute for Astronomy Ph.D. student Maximilian Häberle in a statement.
The following month, a different research team uncovered evidence of another intermediate-mass black hole, this one lurking near the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*) at the center of the Milky Way, about 27,000 light-years from our planet.
You wait a long time for a medium-sized black hole, and then two appear almost simultaneously.
Read more: Hubble Space Telescope uncovers closest massive black hole to Earth — a cosmic clue suspended in time
5) Supermassive black hole experiences an outburst
In 2018, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) unveiled to the world the inaugural image of a black hole, specifically the supermassive black hole at the core of the far-off galaxy Messier 87 (M87).
Six years later, research into this black hole, designated M87*, which possesses a mass of approximately 5.4 billion suns, by the EHT is still yielding significant scientific insights. In December 2024, the scientists involved with the project announced that the EHT, consisting of telescopes across the globe that function as a virtual Earth-sized instrument, observed the same black hole erupting with a powerful and unexpected explosion.
This gamma-ray flare persisted for three days at the end of April 2018. Not only was this the first occasion M87* has flared since 2010, but this explosion was more potent than previous emissions.
By scrutinizing this eruption, EHT scientists aspire to glean more information about the structure surrounding supermassive black holes, especially the flattened disks of gas and dust that nourish them, referred to as accretion disks. The emission has already indicated that the jet of high-speed particles erupting from M87* at near-light speed extends so far that its emergence from M87* was likened to a blue whale bursting from a single bacterium.
“In particular, these findings present the first-ever opportunity to pinpoint the moment at which the particles responsible for the flare are accelerated, which could potentially resolve a longstanding debate regarding the origin of cosmic rays [extremely high-energy particles] detected on Earth,” remarked team leader and University of Trieste researcher Giacomo Principe in a statement.
Read more: 1st colossal black hole ever captured in an image erupts with unexpected gamma-ray explosion
6) Gaia detects a slumbering giant black hole near Earth
In April 2024, the star-tracking telescope Gaia uncovered its third black hole. Not only is this black hole, referred to as “BH3,” the second closest to Earth at merely 2,000 light-years away (the nearest black hole, BH1, was also found by Gaia in 2023), but it also carries quite a hefty mass.
BH3 has a mass equivalent to around 33 suns. While this entails it is relatively insignificant compared to supermassive black holes, in relation to other nearby stellar-mass black holes, BH3 is rather monstrous. It’s somewhat akin to comparing Frankenstein’s creature to Godzilla.
This marked the first occasion that such a hefty stellar-mass black hole has been discovered in proximity to Earth.
“Discovering Gaia BH3 is akin to the pivotal moment in the movie ‘The Matrix’ where Neo begins to ‘perceive’ the matrix,” George Seabroke, a scientist at Mullard Space Science Laboratory at University College London and a member of Gaia’s Black Hole Task Force, stated in a message sent to Space.com. “In our context, ‘the matrix’ refers to our galaxy’s collection of dormant stellar black holes, which were previously concealed from us before Gaia detected them.”
The lead researcher of the discovery team, Pasquale Panuzzo of CNRS, Observatoire de Paris in France, commented in a statement: “This is the sort of discovery you encounter once in a lifetime of research.”
Read more: Record setter! The Milky Way’s most formidable stellar-mass black hole is a slumbering giant hiding close to Earth (video)
7) A fresh perspective on ‘our’ supermassive black hole
This compilation has brought us to the very edges of the observable universe where we investigated some of the earliest black holes. What better way to conclude than to return home and check in on Sgr A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy?
This visit won’t be merely superficial; Sgr A* was making headlines in2024, specifically in March, when the EHT observed a new facet of the well-known black hole. The Earth-sized virtual observatory managed to capture Sgr A* in polarized light for the initial time.
This latest observation not only disclosed that intense magnetic fields are well-structured around Sgr A* akin to those surrounding the significantly more massive M87*, but it also suggested an uncharted characteristic of our black hole.
“We anticipate robust and organized magnetic fields to be directly associated with the ejection of jets, as we witnessed with M87*,” stated Sara Issaoun, research co-lead and NASA Hubble Fellowship Program Einstein Fellow at the Center for Astrophysics (CfA) at Harvard & Smithsonian, to Space.com. “Given that Sgr A*, lacking an observed jet, appears to have a very similar structure, perhaps there exists a jet in Sgr A* that is yet to be observed, which would be immensely thrilling!”
Additional evidence of such a jet may emerge in 2025.
Read more: New perspective of the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way suggests an intriguing hidden characteristic (image)
As previously stated, black holes tend to keep their mysteries hidden, so it remains uncertain what significant advancements will appear on this list in a year as 2025 comes to a close.
One fact that is clear, however: Just as we have been for the past 25 years, Space.com will continue to be present in 2025 to chronicle every advancement made in the endeavor to comprehend black holes, and we anticipate that you will join us in this journey.
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