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Black Holes: The Weird Science of the Most Mysterious Objects in the Universe

In February 2016, scientists captured for the first time ever the burplike sound of gravitational waves, the ripples in space-time that result from the collision of black holes. Black holes have captured popular imagination since Albert Einstein first predicted their existence in 1916. In the late 1960s, American theoretical physicist John Archibald Wheeler coined the term to describe a region in space with a gravitational force so strong that not even light can escape its grip. High-tech satellite telescopes, synchronized radio antennas, and other technologies of the twenty-first century are enabling scientists to study black holes in greater detail than ever before.