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For decades, black holes were the darlings of science fiction writers but treated with perhaps a little less respect by physicists. Although general relativity predicted that black holes could exist, many scientists thought they were too bizarre to exist in the real universe. That’s all changed. Astronomers have now detected several black holes in X-ray-emitting binary star systems, where a normal star orbits a massive yet invisible companion that theory says must be a black hole. Even more convincing evidence has come from the centers of several large galaxies, where stars move about so quickly that they must be caught in the grips of a massive object. By calculating the size and mass of these objects, the only conclusion seems to be that the center of these galaxies harbor supermassive black holes. |
