Black Hole Basics: Test Your Knowledge on Recent Discoveries
Published Jul 3, 2026 · Updated Jul 29, 2026 · Editorial Team
A fun, easy quiz covering recent findings about black holes, from imaging to gravitational waves.
❓ 10 Questions
⏱️ 5 Minutes
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Question 1 of 100 correct
⏱️ 05:00
QUESTION 1
What was the subject of the first-ever image of a black hole, released in 2019?
All Questions in This Quiz
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What was the subject of the first-ever image of a black hole, released in 2019?
- A. The Event Horizon Telescope image of M87*
- B. Sagittarius A*
- C. Cygnus X-1
- D. The Hubble Deep Field
Which observation provided the first direct detection of gravitational waves from merging black holes?
- A. The LIGO detection GW150914 in 2015
- B. Hubble Space Telescope imaging
- C. Chandra X-ray Observatory spectroscopy
- D. Pulsar timing array measurements
What is the approximate mass of Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way?
- A. About 4 million times the Sun's mass
- B. About 4 billion times the Sun's mass
- C. About 4 thousand times the Sun's mass
- D. About 40 times the Sun's mass
Which observations best demonstrate that black holes can launch powerful jets affecting their host galaxies?
- A. Radio imaging of relativistic jets, such as the kiloparsec-scale jet in M87
- B. Visible-light flares from accretion disks
- C. Infrared emission from surrounding dust
- D. Ultraviolet absorption lines in intervening gas
Which technique allows astronomers to estimate a black hole's spin from X-ray observations?
- A. Modelling the relativistically broadened iron K-alpha line reflected from the inner accretion disk
- B. Gravitational lensing of background stars
- C. Pulsar timing arrays
- D. Optical spectroscopy of a companion star's surface composition
Which ground-based observatory contributed critical millimetre-wave data to the first image of a black hole's shadow?
- A. The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA)
- B. The Very Large Telescope (VLT)
- C. The W. M. Keck Observatory
- D. The Arecibo Observatory
What is the term for the boundary around a black hole beyond which nothing, not even light, can escape?
- A. The event horizon
- B. The photon sphere
- C. The accretion disk
- D. The singularity
Which observational signature supports the 'chaotic cold accretion' model of black hole growth?
- A. Clumpy, cold gas clouds detected raining onto active galactic nuclei
- B. Perfectly smooth, hot gas inflow seen in X-rays
- C. Uniform circular stellar orbits near the nucleus
- D. Constant radio jet power over decades
What did the 2022 Event Horizon Telescope image of Sagittarius A* show?
- A. A bright, slightly asymmetric ring of emission around a central dark shadow, of the size general relativity predicts for about 4 million solar masses
- B. A relativistic jet extending thousands of light-years
- C. A completely dark region with no surrounding emission
- D. Two separate shadows indicating a binary black hole
Which is a likely outcome when two black holes merge?
- A. A single, more massive black hole that may receive a recoil 'kick' velocity
- B. Two black holes locked in a permanently stable orbit
- C. Conversion of the remnant into a neutron star
- D. An explosion that forms a new galaxy
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