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Black Holes, drawn

sourcesWhat this rests on

Papers first, then the reference articles used for dates and catalogues, then the legends. A number in the text links here.

  1. John Michell, “On the Means of Discovering the Distance, Magnitude, &c. of the Fixed Stars, in Consequence of the Diminution of the Velocity of Their Light”, Philosophical Transactions 74 (1784) 35–57. Read to the Royal Society 27 Nov 1783. link
  2. Pierre-Simon Laplace, Exposition du système du monde (1796), book V; the passage on “corps obscurs” was dropped from the third edition of 1808. link
  3. Johann Georg von Soldner, “Ueber die Ablenkung eines Lichtstrals von seiner geradlinigen Bewegung”, Berliner Astronomisches Jahrbuch for 1804 (written 1801): light bent by the Sun, in Newton's gravity, by 0.84 arcseconds. link
  4. Isaac Newton, Opticks (1704), Query 1: “Do not Bodies act upon Light at a distance, and by their action bend its Rays?” link
  5. Albert Einstein, “Über den Einfluß der Schwerkraft auf die Ausbreitung des Lichtes”, Annalen der Physik 35 (1911) 898 — the first, Newtonian-sized, prediction of light bending. link
  6. Albert Einstein, “Die Feldgleichungen der Gravitation”, Sitzungsberichte der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (1915) 844–847. link
  7. Karl Schwarzschild, “Über das Gravitationsfeld eines Massenpunktes nach der Einsteinschen Theorie”, Sitzungsberichte (1916) 189–196. English translation: arXiv:physics/9905030. link
  8. Johannes Droste, “The field of a single centre in Einstein's theory of gravitation, and the motion of a particle in that field”, KNAW Proceedings 19 (1917) 197–215 — the same solution, found independently and written more clearly. link
  9. Ludwig Flamm, “Beiträge zur Einsteinschen Gravitationstheorie”, Physikalische Zeitschrift 17 (1916) 448 — the embedding paraboloid. link
  10. Hans Reissner (1916) and Gunnar Nordström (1918): the charged, non-rotating solution. link
  11. Dyson, Eddington & Davidson, “A Determination of the Deflection of Light by the Sun's Gravitational Field, from Observations Made at the Total Eclipse of May 29, 1919”, Phil. Trans. 220 (1920) 291. link
  12. Paul Painlevé (1921) and Allvar Gullstrand (1922): coordinates in which nothing is singular at r = 2M — read at the time as an argument against Einstein's theory. link
  13. Wilhelm Anderson (1929) and Edmund Stoner (1930): the first mass limits for white dwarfs, before Chandrasekhar's. link
  14. Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, “The Maximum Mass of Ideal White Dwarfs”, Astrophysical Journal 74 (1931) 81. link
  15. Georges Lemaître, “L'Univers en expansion”, Annales de la Société Scientifique de Bruxelles A53 (1933) 51 — the first to say plainly that the singularity at r = 2M is a fault of the coordinates, not of space. link
  16. Walter Baade & Fritz Zwicky, “On Super-Novae” and “Cosmic Rays from Super-Novae”, PNAS 20 (1934) 254, 259 — the neutron star proposed. link
  17. Albert Einstein, “On a Stationary System with Spherical Symmetry Consisting of Many Gravitating Masses”, Annals of Mathematics 40 (1939) 922 — his argument that Schwarzschild singularities do not form. It was wrong. link
  18. J. Robert Oppenheimer & George Volkoff, “On Massive Neutron Cores”, Physical Review 55 (1939) 374; with Richard Tolman's work the same year, the mass limit for neutron stars. link
  19. J. Robert Oppenheimer & Hartland Snyder, “On Continued Gravitational Contraction”, Physical Review 56 (1939) 455 — a collapsing star computed through its own horizon. link
  20. David Finkelstein, “Past-Future Asymmetry of the Gravitational Field of a Point Particle”, Physical Review 110 (1958) 965 — the horizon as a one-way surface. link
  21. Martin Kruskal, Physical Review 119 (1960) 1743, and George Szekeres, Publ. Math. Debrecen 7 (1960) 285 — the whole Schwarzschild spacetime in one map. link
  22. Maarten Schmidt, “3C 273: A Star-Like Object with Large Red-Shift”, Nature 197 (1963) 1040. link
  23. Roy Kerr, “Gravitational Field of a Spinning Mass as an Example of Algebraically Special Metrics”, Physical Review Letters 11 (1963) 237. link
  24. Edwin Salpeter, ApJ 140 (1964) 796, and Yakov Zel'dovich, Sov. Phys. Dokl. 9 (1964) 195 — quasars as gas falling onto very massive compact objects. link
  25. Ann Ewing, “‘Black Holes’ in Space”, Science News Letter, 18 January 1964 — the phrase in print, reporting an AAAS session. link
  26. Roger Penrose, “Gravitational Collapse and Space-Time Singularities”, Physical Review Letters 14 (1965) 57. link
  27. Ezra Newman et al., “Metric of a Rotating, Charged Mass”, J. Math. Phys. 6 (1965) 918 — Kerr–Newman. link
  28. Werner Israel (1967), Brandon Carter (1971), David Robinson (1975): the uniqueness theorems — a settled black hole is Kerr–Newman, and has no other feature. link
  29. John Archibald Wheeler, “Our Universe: The Known and the Unknown”, American Scientist 56 (1968) 1 — from the lecture of 29 December 1967 that made the name stick. link
  30. Donald Lynden-Bell, “Galactic Nuclei as Collapsed Old Quasars”, Nature 223 (1969) 690 — a massive black hole in the centre of most galaxies, including ours. link
  31. Roger Penrose, “Gravitational Collapse: The Role of General Relativity”, Rivista del Nuovo Cimento 1 (1969) 252 — the process that draws energy out of a spinning hole. link
  32. C. V. Vishveshwara, “Scattering of Gravitational Radiation by a Schwarzschild Black-hole”, Nature 227 (1970) 936 — the ringdown. link
  33. Stephen Hawking, “Gravitational Radiation from Colliding Black Holes”, Physical Review Letters 26 (1971) 1344 — the area theorem. link
  34. B. Louise Webster & Paul Murdin, Nature 235 (1972) 37; Charles Thomas Bolton, Nature 235 (1972) 271 — Cygnus X-1's unseen companion weighed. link
  35. Jacob Bekenstein, “Black Holes and Entropy”, Physical Review D 7 (1973) 2333. link
  36. James Bardeen, “Timelike and null geodesics in the Kerr metric”, in Black Holes (Les Houches 1972), Gordon & Breach 1973 — the shadow's outline. link
  37. Igor Novikov & Kip Thorne, “Astrophysics of black holes”, in Black Holes (Les Houches 1972); Nikolai Shakura & Rashid Sunyaev, A&A 24 (1973) 337 — the thin disk. link
  38. Stephen Hawking, “Black hole explosions?”, Nature 248 (1974) 30; “Particle creation by black holes”, Communications in Mathematical Physics 43 (1975) 199. link
  39. Don Page, “Particle emission rates from a black hole”, Physical Review D 13 (1976) 198 — the evaporation time, with the particle species counted. link
  40. Jean-Pierre Luminet, “Image of a spherical black hole with thin accretion disk”, Astronomy & Astrophysics 75 (1979) 228 — the first computed picture. link
  41. Fred Adams & Gregory Laughlin, “A dying universe: the long-term fate and evolution of astrophysical objects”, Reviews of Modern Physics 69 (1997) 337. link
  42. Oliver James, Eugénie von Tunzelmann, Paul Franklin & Kip Thorne, “Gravitational lensing by spinning black holes in astrophysics, and in the movie Interstellar”, Classical and Quantum Gravity 32 (2015) 065001. link
  43. LIGO Scientific Collaboration & Virgo Collaboration, “Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Merger”, Physical Review Letters 116 (2016) 061102. link
  44. Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration, “First M87 Event Horizon Telescope Results. I. The Shadow of the Supermassive Black Hole”, ApJ Letters 875 (2019) L1. link
  45. Samuel Gralla, Daniel Holz & Robert Wald, “Black hole shadows, photon rings, and lensing rings”, Physical Review D 100 (2019) 024018; Michael Johnson et al., “Universal interferometric signatures of a black hole's photon ring”, Science Advances 6 (2020) eaaz1310. link
  46. GRAVITY Collaboration, “Detection of the Schwarzschild precession in the orbit of the star S2 near the Galactic centre massive black hole”, A&A 636 (2020) L5; and A&A 657 (2022) L12 for the mass and distance. link
  47. LIGO–Virgo, “GW190521: A Binary Black Hole Merger with a Total Mass of 150 M☉”, Physical Review Letters 125 (2020) 101102. link
  48. The Nobel Prize in Physics 2020: Roger Penrose; Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez. link
  49. Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration, “First Sagittarius A* Event Horizon Telescope Results. I. The Shadow of the Supermassive Black Hole in the Center of the Milky Way”, ApJ Letters 930 (2022) L12. link
  50. Kailash Sahu et al., “An Isolated Stellar-mass Black Hole Detected through Astrometric Microlensing”, ApJ 933 (2022) 83 (OGLE-2011-BLG-0462). link
  51. Alex Sicilia et al., “The Black Hole Mass Function across Cosmic Time”, ApJ 924 (2022) 56 — about 4 × 10¹⁹ stellar-mass black holes in the observable universe. link
  52. NANOGrav Collaboration, “The NANOGrav 15 yr Data Set: Evidence for a Gravitational-wave Background”, ApJ Letters 951 (2023) L8 — with EPTA, PPTA and CPTA the same day. link
  53. Ákos Bogdán et al., “Evidence for heavy-seed origin of early supermassive black holes from a z ≈ 10 X-ray quasar”, Nature Astronomy 8 (2024) 126 (UHZ1). link
  54. Gaia Collaboration, Panuzzo et al., “Discovery of a dormant 33 solar-mass black hole in pre-release Gaia astrometry”, A&A 686 (2024) L2. link
  55. ESA, “Capturing the ripples of spacetime: LISA gets go-ahead”, 25 January 2024 — adoption; launch planned for the mid-2030s. link
  56. Michael Johnson et al., “The Black Hole Explorer: motivation and vision”, SPIE 2024, arXiv:2406.12917 — a space telescope for the photon ring. link
  57. LIGO–Virgo–KAGRA, “GW231123: a Binary Black Hole Merger with Total Mass 190–265 M☉”, 2025, arXiv:2507.08219. link
  58. LIGO–Virgo–KAGRA, “GW250114: testing Hawking's area law and the Kerr nature of black holes”, Physical Review Letters (2025), arXiv:2509.08054. link
  59. Jorryt Matthee et al., “Little Red Dots: an abundant population of faint AGN at z ~ 5 revealed by the EIGER and FRESCO JWST surveys”, ApJ 963 (2024) 129. link
  60. Bernard Carr & Florian Kühnel, “Primordial Black Holes as Dark Matter: Recent Developments”, Annual Review of Nuclear and Particle Science 70 (2020) 355. link
  61. Einstein Telescope — the European underground detector; site decision expected in the second half of the 2020s. link
  62. Cosmic Explorer horizon study, 2021, arXiv:2109.09882 — 40 km arms in the United States. link
  63. NASA, Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope — launch no later than May 2027; its Galactic Bulge survey is expected to catch isolated black holes by microlensing. link
  64. Ahmed Almheiri et al., “The entropy of Hawking radiation”, Reviews of Modern Physics 93 (2021) 035002 — the island rule and the Page curve. link
  65. Wikipedia, “Black hole” — history, etymology and the catalogue of firsts. link
  66. Wikipedia, “Kerr metric”. link
  67. Wikipedia, “Hawking radiation”. link
  68. Wikipedia, “Primordial black hole”. link
  69. Wikipedia, “TON 618” — mass estimates range from 40 to 66 billion solar masses depending on the method. link
  70. Wikipedia, “Event Horizon Telescope”. link
  71. Wikipedia, “List of gravitational wave observations”. link
  72. Wikipedia, “Penrose diagram”. link
  73. Friedrich Nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Böse (1886), §146. English by Helen Zimmern (1906), both out of copyright. link
  74. Wikipedia, “Rahu”; and “Lunar node” for the 18.6-year regression. link
  75. Āryabhaṭa, Āryabhaṭīya (499 CE) — eclipses explained by the shadow of the Earth and Moon at the nodes. link
  76. Majjhima Nikāya 123, Acchariya-abbhūta Sutta — “the spaces between the worlds, where the light of the sun and moon cannot reach” — in Ñāṇamoli and Bodhi's translation. link
  77. Wikipedia, “Emu in the sky” — the constellation drawn from the dark dust lanes of the Milky Way. link
  78. Wikipedia, “Inca astronomy” — the dark cloud constellations: Yacana the llama, Mach'acuay the serpent and the rest. link
  79. Wikipedia, “Ginnungagap” — the yawning void of the Prose Edda's Gylfaginning. link
  80. Wikipedia, “Charybdis”; Homer, Odyssey XII. link
  81. Wikipedia, “Xibalba” — the Black Road; Popol Vuh. link
  82. Wikipedia, “Apep” — the serpent that swallows the sun. link
  83. Wikipedia, “Tehom” — the deep of Genesis 1:2; and “Abyss (religion)”. link
  84. Wikipedia, “Tiangou” — the heavenly dog that eats the sun and moon. link
  85. Wikipedia, “Māori mythology” — Te Kore, the void, before Te Pō, the night. link
  86. Dante, Inferno XXXIV, lines 106–111: the centre of the Earth, “the point to which all weights are drawn from every part”. link
  87. Edgar Allan Poe, “A Descent into the Maelström” (1841). link
  88. Wikipedia, “Louhi” — who steals the sun and moon and locks them in a mountain (Kalevala, runo 47–49). link
  89. Wikipedia, “Black Hole of Calcutta” — the 1756 prison cell whose name Robert Dicke is said to have borrowed. link