Black Holes: The Universe’s Invisible Monsters

Black holes are regions of space where gravity is so strong that not even light can escape.
They form when massive stars collapse under their own gravity at the end of their lives.
The boundary around a black hole is called the event horizon—past it, nothing returns.
Stellar-mass black holes can be a few to dozens of times the Sun’s mass.
Supermassive black holes, millions to billions of solar masses, lurk at galaxy centers.
Our Milky Way’s central black hole, Sagittarius A*, is about 4 million solar masses.
Black holes can “feed” on nearby gas and stars, releasing powerful X-rays and jets.
Merging black holes create ripples in spacetime called gravitational waves.
The first direct image of a black hole’s shadow was captured in 2019 in galaxy M87.
Far from being just cosmic destroyers, black holes shape galaxies and influence cosmic evolution.