• Home
  • Latest stories
  • Find faculty experts
  • Big Brains podcast
  • Podcasts
  • UChicago Explainer Series
  • The Day Tomorrow Began
Media Resources

Covering a story? Visit our page for journalists or call (773) 702-8360.

Submission from the 2022 Science as Art contest
Science as Art
Submit your images from UChicago research to 2023 Science as Art contest
Top Stories
  1. Scientists use lasers to recreate 'twisted' superconducting material
  2. Jon Stewart, Bob Woodward to discuss military and veterans issues at UChicago event
  3. Social Work: The Day Tomorrow Began
  • Learn more about The Day Tomorrow Began

The Day Tomorrow Began

Black Holes

At age 19, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar was the first to propose that stars were destined to collapse at the end of their lives. His idea was controversial, but his research paved the way to the discovery of black holes. Today, UChicago scientists are conducting groundbreaking research on black holes and what they can tell us about the universe.

Black holes fascinate both the public and scientists—they push the limits of our understanding about matter, space and time.

They are created when massive stars collapse at the end of their lives (and perhaps under other circumstances that we don’t know about yet.) One of the first steps toward the discovery of black holes was made by University of Chicago Prof. Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, who realized that these stars would have to collapse after they ran out of fuel.

Many at the time were shocked and skeptical, but other scientists calculated that the star would continue forever to fall inward toward its center—thus creating what we called a black hole—and the idea became increasingly accepted. In the latter half of the 20th century, eminent theoretical scientists, including Steven Hawking at Cambridge, John Wheeler and Jacob Bekenstein at Princeton, Chandrasekhar and Robert Wald at the University of Chicago, and many others, explored the details of the mathematics and physics behind black holes.

Today we know the universe is full of black holes. In the past decade, University of Chicago scientists have helped us hear the echoes of their collisions and take images of the light swirling around them.

And black holes have helped us learn many things about the universe. For example, they have helped us test Einstein’s theory of general relativity, which describes how mass, space and time are related to one another. Scientists think they can tell us much more about these and other essential rules of the universe.

Explore UChicago Library’s archival collections on black holes:

  • Prof. Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar papers
  • Papers relating to Physical Sciences, Astronomy and Astrophysics
Big Brains podcast

Big Brains podcast: The 'legendary' discovery of black holes

Explore the surprising history of these cosmic monsters—and the future of research in the field—with UChicago scientists Daniel Holz and Robert Wald and Nobel Prize winner Andrea Ghez.

Listen to the episode here

Artists conception of a black hole surrounded by a bright ring and stars

Black holes, explained

What is a black hole? What do they look like, eat and how do they grow? What’s inside a black hole? And will the Earth ever fall into one? Learn the answers to these questions and more.

Read the explainer here

Related research

The Day Tomorrow Began - Black Holes

The quest to take a picture of the black hole at the center of our own galaxy

An artist’s conception of a supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy that is spewing out jets as well as via ultra-fast outflows of ionized gas.

Black holes have tantrums, and scientists have finally captured the resulting gamma rays

artist's conception of a black hole, a ring of matter surrounds a center that is hurling out light

Could dark matter be behind mysterious, supermassive black holes in the early universe?

Andrea Ghez

Watch Nobel laureate Andrea Ghez explain how to prove a black hole exists

Artist's rendition of colliding black holes

Gravitational waves detected 100 years after Einstein’s prediction

The Day Tomorrow Began

Explore more topics in the series

Learn about the monumental breakthroughs at the University of Chicago and the people behind them.

— Sleep research

— Ancient civilizations

— Black holes

— The Day Tomorrow Began website

Learn more about UChicago's global impact

Wide-angle photo of gigantic detector equipment at CERN

Field-defining research

Learn about how UChicago scholars are shaping fields and tackling the world's biggest problems.

Nuclear Energy sculpture by Henry Moore

UChicago breakthroughs

Trace impactful research and discoveries through a timeline that shows UChicago’s scholarly impact in the world.

Prof. Ted Fujita in his lab next to a machine that simulates a small-scale tornado

UChicago Explainer Series

Explore idea pioneered at the University—and how its scholars are shaping our understanding of the world.

Wendy Freedman recording an episode of Big Brains

Big Brains podcast

Listen to the stories behind pioneering research and pivotal breakthroughs by scholars at UChicago and beyond.

Campus rooftops

UChicago News

Explore the latest stories about University research, its dynamic intellectual community and more.

University of Chicago

Office of Communications

5801 S. Ellis Ave., Suite 120, Chicago, IL 60637

(773) 702-8360

news@uchicago.edu

  • University of Chicago homepage
  • Office of Communications Staff Directory
  • Feedback
  • Brand & Identity Guidelines