"Black holes, the ultradense collapsed objects predicted by Einstein’s theory of general relativity, are often depicted as voracious feeders whose extraordinary gravity acts like a one-way membrane: Everything is sucked in, even light, and virtually nothing leaks out.

Now, for the first time, astronomers may have a chance to watch as a giant black hole consumes a cosmic snack.

In March or April, a gas cloud that...

Sarah Rugheimer was selected as a 2014 Horizon Scholar. The Horizon Scholars are recognized as graduate students "whose ideas, innovations, and insights have the potential to reshape their disciplines."

More Information:  Graduate School Press Release 

John Johnson was featured in Symmetry Magazine's "Physicists to Follow" feature: Symmetry Magazine: #FollowFriday IV: Physicists to follow on Twitter @astrojohnjohn

"It has been called an elegant solution to a difficult problem. The notion that mysterious dark matter, which holds galaxies together, is made of primordial black holes that formed when dense regions of early Universe gravitationally collapsed was laid out in 1971 by physicist Stephen Hawking of the University of Cambridge, UK¹. The idea has never been the mainstream...

Halton Arp attended Harvard, where he majored in astronomy. He graduated in 1949. Read more about his remarkable life.

• Sky and Telescope: Cosmologist Halton Arp (1927–2013)
• New York Times:...

Alicia Soderberg studies the death of stars. Often, these final moments come as violent explosions known as . They're spectacular events, but catching one as it unfolds can be tricky. "You have to be in the right place at the right time, and often we're not," says the professor in Harvard's astronomy department. "So all you can do is do a stellar autopsy and go back and try to pick up the pieces and try to figure out what happened."

NPR Story:...