BLACK HOLE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does black hole mean? 

• BLACK HOLE (noun)
  The noun BLACK HOLE has 1 sense:

1. a region of space resulting from the collapse of a star; extremely high gravitational field

  Familiarity information: BLACK HOLE used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• BLACK HOLE (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A region of space resulting from the collapse of a star; extremely high gravitational field

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural objects (not man-made)

Hypernyms ("black hole" is a kind of...):

part; region (the extended spatial location of something)

 Context examples 

“With the right conditions, planets could be formed even in harsh environments, such as around a black hole,” said Keiichi Wada, a professor at Kagoshima University in Japan.

(Thousands of Planets Could Be Orbiting around Black Holes, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

Short-lived, or "transient," X-ray sources like ULX-4 are far more rare, so a single dramatic event - like a black hole quickly destroying a small star - might explain the observation.

(NASA Satellite Spots a Mystery That's Gone in a Flash, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

A black hole yawned beneath into which we all peered, while Musgrave, kneeling at the side, pushed down the lantern.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The study presents a roadmap for capturing 4-to-10-year snapshots of intermediate-mass black hole activity using both ground- and upcoming space-based detection instruments, including NSF's Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory.

(Observing 'black hole symphony' using gravitational wave astronomy, National Science Foundation)

The results were nothing short of fantastic: A star eight times heavier than the sun was orbiting a 70-solar-mass black hole every 79 days.

(Unpredicted stellar black hole discovered by astronomers, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) has captured an extreme and rare event in the regions immediately surrounding a supermassive black hole.

(NuSTAR sees rare blurring of black hole light, NASA)

Because light from the galaxy hosting the black hole has traveled 12.5 billion years to reach us, astronomers are seeing the object as it was in the distant past.

(The Most Luminous Galaxy in Universe, NASA)

Just one of the discs around a supermassive black hole can have as much as 100,000 times the mass of the Sun, in the form of dust, the researchers suggest.

(Thousands of Planets Could Be Orbiting around Black Holes, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

Still, such a search is like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack: only one star in a thousand may be circling a black hole.

(Unpredicted stellar black hole discovered by astronomers, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

The new study explores the possibility that the light came from a black hole consuming another object, such as a star.

(NASA Satellite Spots a Mystery That's Gone in a Flash, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)