It can be challenging for us humans to wrap our brains around really massive numbers. Even the scale of a million or billion is pretty hard for most people to really comprehend. So prepare yourself to think big, because scientists have recorded the largest and most distant black hole flare to date, and the numbers around it are pretty staggering.
The event occurred at an active galactic nucleus, also known as an accreting or feeding black hole, that they predict is 500 million times more massive than our sun and is located 10 billion light years away. The researchers suspect that this flare was caused by a tidal disruption event, where the gravity of the AGN may have pulled a nearby star closer and consumed it. The team estimates that the star eaten by the black hole had a mass 30 times that of our system’s own sun. And according to the layperson blog post from Caltech about the event, “at its brightest, the flare shined with the light of 10 trillion suns.”
“This is unlike any AGN we’ve ever seen,” said Matthew Graham, who was a co-principal investigator on the study as well as a research professor of astronomy at Caltech and project scientist for the Zwicky Transient Facility, which first observed the black hole in question in 2018 along with the Catalina Real-Time Transient Survey. The research about the AGN and its bonkers flare appeared in the journal Nature Astronomy.
If news of an adaptation of Charles Burns’ Black Hole feels like deja vu, that’s because there have been multiple attempts to bring the graphic novels, which were published from 1995 to 2005, to the screen—including a 2018 announcement that Rick Famuyiwa (one of many directors who almost made DC’s The Flash) would be tackling it as a feature. But Netflix has seemingly found a winning approach, giving a straight-to-series order to a creative team that includes Jane Schoenbrun, director of the critically acclaimed I Saw the TV Glow.
As Variety reports, Schoenbrun—who also made We’re All Going to the World’s Fair and has the intriguing-sounding Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma on the way—has signed on to “develop the graphic novels for television as well as direct.”
The official description is as follows, according to the trade: “There’s an old myth that haunts the seemingly perfect small town of Roosevelt: if you have sex too young, you’ll contract the ‘bug,’ a virus that literally turns you into a ‘monster’ from your worst nightmares. Absurd, right? That’s what Chris always assumed, until, after one reckless night at the beginning of senior year, she finds herself infected. Now she’ll be cast out to the woods to live with the other infected, where a chilling, new threat emerges: a serial killer who’s hunting them one by one.”
Burns wrote and illustrated Black Hole across 12 issues—a compilation was also released—and the title, which won a Harvey Award in 2006, has gained cult-classic status. You can’t tell from the logline if Netflix’s Black Hole will retain the original’s mid-1970s Seattle setting, but that feels like a good fit for Schoenbrun; they have a well-proven track record of capturing unease through the eyes of teens who have perhaps seen too much already—blended with eerie nostalgia, as was vividly experienced by I Saw the TV Glow‘s TV-obsessed main characters.
Would-be Black Hole adapters over the years have also included Alexandre Aja (Crawl) and David Fincher, among others.
Don’t want to commit to a longterm relationship with a graphic novel series? Sounds like you need a graphic novel one night stand. These standalones come with no strings, and no series attached. This way, you can get really graphic with one story, but still have time for yourself while you’re “figuring things out” or “focusing on your career.” Just don’t make it a pattern. One of these days you’re gonna want to settle down. Why not do it with Brian K. Vaughn’s Saga? There’s a graphic novel about a loving, committed relationship between hot extraterrestrials – everything you could ever want in love. Until then, it’s time to sow your wild oats with these titles: the 10 best standalone graphic novels.
Daytripper
(Vertigo)
Daytripper by Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá is about a day in the life of obituary writer Brás de Oliva Domingos – a day that ends in his death. Told across a series of ten vignettes each taking place at pivotal moments in the writer’s life, the graphic novel examines the many ways that Brás’ could have bought the farm. First love, parenthood, old age, Brás’ life comes to a close at each one of these milestones, before skipping forward into a future where he survives. This isn’t a “break the loop” plot like Groundhog Day, but rather a mediation on the fragility of life – how any moment could be our last. A painfully relatable novel, Daytripper will have you questioning your own life. Are you really living it to the fullest? Would you have any regrets if you died tomorrow? Are you happy with the way things are? Heady questions for a graphic novel one night stand, but important to consider regardless.
Spinning
(First Second Books)
Spinning is the graphic memoir Tillie Walden, recounting her days as a young figure skater – a sport she hated with every fiber of her adolescent being. She spent ten years criss-crossing the country and winning competitions, all the while growing more and more disillusioned with the sport and its culture. Tillie’s inner turmoil came to a head after she fell in love with another woman, and realized that she couldn’t square the heteronormative culture of figure skating with her budding queer identity. It’s a love letter to overachievers everywhere, children who are led to believe their value comes from what they can accomplish as opposed to who they are. It’s a graphic novel that feels like medicine for your wounded inner child – one that encourages you to accept yourself whether or not you take home a trophy.
This One Summer
(First Second)
This One Summer by Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki is a coming of age story about two teenage girls and their experiences at a lake house vacation. Rose and Windy were always close, and their families have spent summers at an Awago lake house for as long as they can remember. While their childhood memories of the place are wrapped in bliss, this summer, the mood has changed. Rose and her mother Alice are at each others’ throats, and the young girl seeks solace in her best friend, and in a few crushes on some local boys. One of the most challenged books in American libraries, This One Summer is an honest look at two young people discovering their sexuality, and learning that the adults in their lives don’t have it all as “figured out” as they claim. If you’re looking for wistful bildungsroman by the side of a lake, this novel is for you.
Blankets
(Drawn and Quarterly)
Craig Thompson’s Blankets is a graphic memoir about the author’s younger years, centered around his tumultuous experience with first love. While at a winter church camp (you know where this is going) the Christian Craig falls hard for Raina, a young Baptist who has a complicated relationship with her family and her faith. As the devout Craig and the wavering Raina begin to grow closer, their unresolved inner turmoil tears their relationship apart. Yes, this in an “ugly cry” kind of novel – one that will having you sobbing into the blankets for which it is named. It’s sweet as a first kiss and brutal as goodbye, and you’ll gleefully weep through every page. And if you had a Christian upbringing? Oof. This graphic novel will go straight for your emotional jugular.
Through The Woods
(Margaret K. McElderry Books)
Through The Woods by Emily Carroll is tears a page out of the Brothers Grimm’s book – five pages, to be precise. A collection of five dark fairytales, Through The Woods features some of the author’s most celebrated webcomics – including the viral sensation His Face All Red. Rendered in hauntingly beautiful colors, this novel is certain get your spine tingling harder than Little Red Riding Hood’s while facing down a Big Bad Wolf. The standout story is about a relationship between two brothers – one murdered the other, and yet the dead one appears to have come back to life. Is it a resurrected spirit with complete amnesia of the crime? Or a doppelgänger that didn’t do its research? You’ll find out, but you may not like the answer.
Black Hole
(Pantheon)
Charles Burn’s Black Hole is a coming of age story that forgoes graphic memoir coziness to tell a tale of adolescent horror. In a suburban 1970’s Seattle, the kids are not alright – the neighborhood has fallen to the grips of a sexually transmitted plague. The symptoms range from subtle changes to monstrous mutations, but one thing is certain, once you get it, there’s no cure. Black Hole is a parable about the abject terror that comes with puberty – a changing body is a yucky thing. When changing bodies are compelled to plaster themselves all over other changing bodies, things can only get worse. And once people start turning up murdered, things do. Bizarre, alienating, and utterly gross, don’t read this one on a full stomach.
We3
(Vertigo)
Do you like dressing your pets up in adorable little costumes and parading them around? Evidently, so does We3‘s writer Grant Morrison. But instead of dressing up dogs and cats in vampire capes and fabric hot dog buns, he equips them with cybernetic murder suits fit for government wetwork. The dog, cat and rabbit that make up the Animal Weapons 3 task force have been outfitted with cutting edge technology, and are sicced on enemies of the state. After multiple successful assassinations, the government has decided to “retire” the trio through euthanasia, but their scientist creator just let them out of their cages. On the run from the long arm of the law, this animal trio has to fight to survive in a dog eat dog world. Cyberborg pets vs. black-ops soldiers, what more could you want in a graphic novel?
After The Rain
(Abrams ComicArts – Megascope)
After The Rain is a graphic novel adaption of Nnedi Okorafor’s short story On The Road, which is about a woman who is having a very bad day. While visiting her grandmother in Nigeria, young Chioma hears a knock at the door after a powerful storm. When she opens the door, she finds a young boy standing there. Not weird on its own, but when she realizes that he’s holding his own severed head, things get weirder fast. After touching Chioma, the boy disappears into thin air. Realizing that she’s somehow been magically marked by the little punk, Chioma sets out on a quest to lift a curse that she barely understands. Kids these days, walking around with their heads cut off. They got no respect.
Fun Home
(Mariner Books)
Before it was adapted into a devastating Broadway musical, Fun Home was a devastating graphic novel by Alison Bechdel. It’s the story of the author’s relationship with her late father Bruce, an English teacher and funeral home director. After coming out as a lesbian in college, Alison learns that her father is gay. A little while later, he died by apparent suicide. Reeling from the revelation, Alison reexamines her less than happy childhood with her father, and realizes that his emotional coldness and outbursts of anger must have come from the secret that he kept. Painful and painfully funny, Fun Home is the story of a woman shouldering the twin burdens of grief and love for a person she lost.
Blue Is The Warmest Color
(Arsenal Pulp Press)
Jul Maroh’s graphic novel Blue Is The Warmest Color is better known for its famously tragic film adaption, centered around the doomed love between two young French women. Rendered in watercolors the consistency of the tears you’ll shed reading it, this novel details the star-crossed romance between Emma and Clementine. Clementine’s electric relationship with Emma starts out like a dream, but reality hits hard as the pair deal with the social stigma of queerness as well as their own turbulent emotions. Like any tragic romance worth its salt, the whole thing comes crashing down in anger and heartbreak. If you’re looking for a cozy romance comfort read, put this novel back on the bookstore shelf. If you need a good cry, buy twelve copies.
Sarah Fimm (they/them) is actually nine choirs of biblically accurate angels crammed into one pair of $10 overalls. They have been writing articles for nerds on the internet for less than a year now. They really like anime. Like… REALLY like it. Like you know those annoying little kids that will only eat hotdogs and chicken fingers? They’re like that… but with anime. It’s starting to get sad.
The supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy is the undisputed heavyweight champion of the Milky Way, but a newly spotted object takes the crown for the most massive stellar black hole known in our galaxy, weighing in at an impressive 33 times the mass of our Sun.
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A team led by Pasquale Panuzzo, an astronomer at the Observatoire de Paris, has uncovered the most massive stellar black hole ever detected in the Milky Way. Gaia BH3 dwarfs the previous record holder, Cygnus X-1, which weighs just 21 solar masses. The findings are detailed in a paper released today in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.
BH3 is now the heaviest of the three largest known black holes in the Milky Way.Image: ESO
Gaia BH3 is in the constellation Aquila, roughly 2,000 light-years from Earth. The team discovered it during a review of data from the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission, a space-based observatory that has been operational since 2013. Gaia’s ongoing mission is to construct the most detailed three-dimensional map of our galaxy. The star orbiting BH3 was already known to astronomers, but its status as the companion of a black hole came as a complete surprise, and the resulting weight even more so.
“When I saw the results for the first time, I was convinced there was a problem in the data. I could not believe it,” Panuzzo told Gizmodo. “Now, I feel I’ve really done the discovery of my life!”
The discovery was backed by a suite of ground-based observatories and sophisticated instruments, including the Ultraviolet and Visual Echelle Spectrograph (UVES) on the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile, the HERMES spectrograph at the Mercator Telescope in Spain, and the SOPHIE high-precision spectrograph in France.
The astronomers used Gaia’s precise measurements to determine the size of the orbit and the time it takes for the star to circle around the black hole. They then applied Kepler’s laws, which are principles that describe the motions of planets and stars, to calculate the black hole’s mass from the orbit’s size and period. They employed two methods: astrometric measurements, which track the slight wobbling movements of the companion star as it appears to shift positions in the sky, and spectroscopy, which uses the Doppler effect to measure the speed at which the star is moving toward or away from us.
Stellar black holes are remnants of massive stars that collapsed under their own gravity, typically forming black holes about 10 times the mass of our Sun. Gaia BH3’s significant mass suggests it originated from a metal-poor star, which retained more mass over its lifetime and could thus form a larger black hole upon its death, according to the new research.
By contrast, supermassive black hole Sagittarius A*, parked at the galactic core, is vastly larger, with about 4 million times the mass of the Sun. These behemoths do not form from the collapse of a single star but likely grow from the merger of smaller black holes and the accumulation of gas and stellar material over millions of years.
The stellar black hole “formed by the gravitational collapse of a massive star—a star probably 40 to 50 times more massive than our Sun—at the end of its life,” Panuzzo explained. “These kinds of stars have a short life, a few million years, compared to the 10 billion years of the Sun, and they end their life with a supernova, leaving behind a black hole. This is why we call them ‘stellar’ black holes, to not confuse them with the supermassive black holes at the center of the galaxies.”
Panuzzo said it’s “quite probable” that even larger stellar black holes exist in our galaxy. Previously, the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA gravitational telescopes detected the merging of black holes of more than 80 solar masses in distant galaxies. Indeed, heavy stellar black holes have been detected before, but in other galaxies and using alternative methods of detection. These faraway black holes are identified through gravitational wave astronomy, which observes the ripples in spacetime caused by the mergers of stellar black holes. I asked Panuzzo why we’ve been able to find huge stellar black holes in galaxies far, far away, but only recently spotted one in our own galaxy.
“There are two reasons,” he said. “The first is that the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA gravitational telescopes are able to detect black hole mergers very far away, probing billions of galaxies. The second one is that these black holes are produced by massive stars that have a low metallicity,” that is, stars composed almost exclusively of hydrogen and helium, with only traces of the other elements. “These stars were present in our galaxy only in its infancy, so we cannot see the formation of new massive black holes in our galaxy anymore,” according to Panuzzo.
The data used in the study were initially intended for the next Gaia data release, expected by the end of 2025. Due to the significance of the discovery, however, the team opted to publish the findings early. “This discovery has a lot of implications for the stellar evolution models and the gravitational waves field,” Panuzzo explained. “It was considered that this exceptional discovery could not be kept hidden to the community for two years waiting for the next release.” What’s more, by disclosing it now, the scientific community can perform follow-up observations earlier, he added.
To that end, future observations with the GRAVITY instrument on the ESO’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer will aim to determine if this black hole is pulling in matter from its surroundings, offering deeper insights into its nature and behavior.
Astronomers have discovered what may be the brightest object in the universe, a quasar with a black hole at its heart growing so fast that it swallows the equivalent of a sun a day.The record-breaking quasar shines 500 trillion times brighter than our sun. The black hole powering this distant quasar is more than 17 billion times more immense than our sun, an Australian-led team reported Monday in the journal Nature Astronomy. While the quasar resembles a mere dot in images, scientists envision a ferocious place.The rotating disk around the quasar’s black hole — the luminous swirling gas and other matter from gobbled-up stars — is like a cosmic hurricane.”This quasar is the most violent place that we know in the universe,” lead author Christian Wolf of Australian National University said in an email.The European Southern Observatory spotted the object, J0529-4351, during a 1980 sky survey, but it was thought to be a star. It was not identified as a quasar — the extremely active and luminous core of a galaxy — until last year. Observations by telescopes in Australia and Chile’s Atacama Desert clinched it.”The exciting thing about this quasar is that it was hiding in plain sight and was misclassified as a star previously,” Yale University’s Priyamvada Natarajan, who was not involved in the study, said in an email. These later observations and computer modeling have determined that the quasar is gobbling up the equivalent of 370 suns a year — roughly one a day. Further analysis shows the mass of the black hole to be 17 to 19 billion times that of our sun, according to the team. More observations are needed to understand its growth rate.The quasar is 12 billion light-years away and has been around since the early days of the universe. A light-year is 5.8 trillion miles. ___The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. —
Astronomers have discovered what may be the brightest object in the universe, a quasar with a black hole at its heart growing so fast that it swallows the equivalent of a sun a day.
The record-breaking quasar shines 500 trillion times brighter than our sun. The black hole powering this distant quasar is more than 17 billion times more immense than our sun, an Australian-led team reported Monday in the journal Nature Astronomy.
While the quasar resembles a mere dot in images, scientists envision a ferocious place.
The rotating disk around the quasar’s black hole — the luminous swirling gas and other matter from gobbled-up stars — is like a cosmic hurricane.
“This quasar is the most violent place that we know in the universe,” lead author Christian Wolf of Australian National University said in an email.
The European Southern Observatory spotted the object, J0529-4351, during a 1980 sky survey, but it was thought to be a star. It was not identified as a quasar — the extremely active and luminous core of a galaxy — until last year. Observations by telescopes in Australia and Chile’s Atacama Desert clinched it.
“The exciting thing about this quasar is that it was hiding in plain sight and was misclassified as a star previously,” Yale University’s Priyamvada Natarajan, who was not involved in the study, said in an email.
These later observations and computer modeling have determined that the quasar is gobbling up the equivalent of 370 suns a year — roughly one a day. Further analysis shows the mass of the black hole to be 17 to 19 billion times that of our sun, according to the team. More observations are needed to understand its growth rate.
The quasar is 12 billion light-years away and has been around since the early days of the universe. A light-year is 5.8 trillion miles.
___
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
