Black holes don't have to be active to warp space and time

Even dormant black holes warp space and time, scientists now say. The discovery came from a supermassive black hole that’s a few million Solar masses and is located at the center of a galaxy 3.8 billion light years away.

Black holes are so incredibly dense that nothing — not even light — can escape their gravitational pull. So we can’t really observe them directly. To study them, scientists detect the X-rays emitted by the nearby matter that accelerates and heats up as it gets sucked in by the black hole.

This dormant black hole tore a star apart 3.8 billion light years away

But this star-eater is a special kind of black hole: a dormant black hole, basically a sleeping giant that doesn’t devour much gas. About 90 percent of all...