Astronomers have witnessed a distant supermassive black hole devouring its surrounding matter so rapidly that it is "burping" out excess mass at nearly a third of the speed of light.

Traditionally thought to go silent after a brief flare of activity, some black holes are now being observed emitting new bursts of energy years after devouring a star—"the equivalent of a cosmic burp, ...

Astronomers at the University of Hawaii uncovered black hole events so packed with energy, they were the biggest explosions ...

But in the past two decades, new types of black holes have been seen and astronomers are beginning to understand how they ...

These are rare occurrences—scientists estimate that the giant black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy gobbles a star ...

Supermassive black holes are seen as sources of wanton cosmic destruction, but there may be more to their powerful influence ...

"Very massive stars are like the 'rock stars' of the universe — they are powerful, and they live fast and die young." ...