Hinted at as early as the 1780s and predicted by Einstein’s general theory of relativity, they didn’t get the name we know today until the 1960s. Bizarre beasts that squash gobs of matter into...

Black holes were once thought to be only a mathematical curiosity. They were bizarre beasts that squashed gobs of matter into infinitely dense abysses. But bit by bit, astronomers tallied up evidence for black holes’ existence.

Many astronomers think that the first black holes—seed black holes—are the remnants of the first stars, corpses left behind after the stars exploded into supernovae. Yet these stellar...

Black holes shape a lot of what it takes for galaxies to form and for them to start forming stars. We wouldn’t be here without them. Understanding the history of black holes is understanding the history of us. Astronomers captured the first ever image of Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the centre of our Galaxy.

While their enigmatic name was first coined in 1967, the idea of objects whose gravity is so intense not even light can escape them is far older. In 1783, an English cleric and amateur scientist named John Michell showed that Newton’s law of gravity suggested such objects could exist.