[ method ]
Sources and method: scientific papers and credits
Updated 8 October 2026
How facts are checked
- Every observational figure points to a published paper or an institutional source (NASA, ESO, the EHT, LIGO and Virgo collaborations, the Gaia satellite).
- Computed values (radii, temperatures, durations) use CODATA 2018 constants and are checked against known cases, such as the 2.95 km radius of a one-solar-mass black hole.
- When a value is uncertain or debated, it is given with its range, and hypotheses are phrased as such.
Real, computed or illustrated
Real imageThe images of M87* and Sgr A* are the Event Horizon Telescope's, published by ESO under CC BY 4.0 (credit: EHT Collaboration), shown unmodified.
Artistic illustrationThe ambient videos in the experience are artistic illustrations: they evoke black holes without being real images or simulations of them.
Synthesized soundThe GW150914 chirp is computed in your browser from a simplified model. Official recordings are available from the Gravitational Wave Open Science Center.
The gravitational lensing render follows the real paths of light rays around a Schwarzschild black hole; only the disk's colours and texture are stylised. The qubit network simulation is a teaching metaphor, not a physics calculation.
Scientific review
This site is an independent popular-science project. It has not yet been reviewed by a professional physicist. If you are a researcher willing to review it, or if you spot a mistake, open an issue on GitHub: every correction will be checked and credited on this page.
Foundational papers
- 1965Roger PenroseGravitational collapse and space-time singularitiesPhysical Review Letters 14, 57
- 1973Jacob BekensteinBlack holes and entropyPhysical Review D 7, 2333
- 1974Stephen HawkingBlack hole explosions?Nature 248, 30
- 1975Stephen HawkingParticle creation by black holesCommunications in Mathematical Physics 43, 199
- 1976Stephen HawkingBreakdown of predictability in gravitational collapsePhysical Review D 14, 2460
- 1997Juan MaldacenaThe Large N limit of superconformal field theories and supergravityAdv. Theor. Math. Phys. · arXiv:hep-th/9711200
- 2006Shinsei Ryu & Tadashi TakayanagiHolographic derivation of entanglement entropy from AdS/CFTPhysical Review Letters · arXiv:hep-th/0603001
- 2009Brian SwingleEntanglement renormalization and holographyPhysical Review D 86, 065007 · arXiv:0905.1317
- 2010Mark Van RaamsdonkBuilding up spacetime with quantum entanglementGen. Rel. Grav. 42, 2323 · arXiv:1005.3035
- 2010Erik VerlindeOn the origin of gravity and the laws of NewtonJHEP · arXiv:1001.0785
- 2012Almheiri, Marolf, Polchinski & SullyBlack holes: complementarity or firewalls?JHEP 2013, 62 · arXiv:1207.3123
- 2013Juan Maldacena & Leonard SusskindCool horizons for entangled black holes (ER = EPR)Fortschritte der Physik · arXiv:1306.0533
- 2014Ahmed Almheiri, Xi Dong & Daniel HarlowBulk locality and quantum error correction in AdS/CFTJHEP 2015, 163 · arXiv:1411.7041
- 2015Pastawski, Yoshida, Harlow & PreskillHolographic quantum error-correcting codesJHEP · arXiv:1503.06237
- 1993Don N. PageInformation in black hole radiationPhysical Review Letters 71, 3743 · arXiv:hep-th/9306083
- 2019Geoffrey PeningtonEntanglement wedge reconstruction and the information paradoxarXiv:1905.08255
- 2019Almheiri, Engelhardt, Marolf & MaxfieldThe entropy of bulk quantum fields and the entanglement wedge of an evaporating black holearXiv:1905.08762
- 2019Almheiri, Mahajan, Maldacena & ZhaoThe Page curve of Hawking radiation from semiclassical geometryarXiv:1908.10996
Observations and data
- EHT Collaboration (2019), First M87 Event Horizon Telescope results. I. The shadow of the supermassive black hole, ApJL 875, L1
- EHT Collaboration (2022), First Sagittarius A* Event Horizon Telescope results. I, ApJL 930, L12
- GRAVITY Collaboration (2022), mass and distance of Sgr A* from stellar orbits, A&A 657, L12
- LIGO Scientific & Virgo Collaborations (2016), Observation of gravitational waves from a binary black hole merger, PRL 116, 061102
- LIGO Scientific & Virgo Collaborations (2020), GW190521: a binary black hole merger with a total mass of 150 M☉, PRL 125, 101102
- El-Badry et al. (2023), A Sun-like star orbiting a black hole, MNRAS 518, 1057
- Gaia Collaboration, Panuzzo et al. (2024), Discovery of a dormant 33 solar-mass black hole in pre-release Gaia astrometry, A&A 686, L2
- Miller-Jones et al. (2021), Cygnus X-1 contains a 21-solar mass black hole, Science 371, 1046
- Mehrgan et al. (2019), A 40 billion solar mass black hole in the extreme core of Holm 15A, ApJ 887, 195
- Shemmer et al. (2004), The hard X-ray spectral properties of high-redshift quasars, ApJ 614, 547 (TON 618 mass estimate)
- NASA Science, Types of black holes
- NASA Goddard (2024), New NASA black hole visualization takes viewers beyond the brink
- ESO, conditions d'utilisation des images (CC BY 4.0) / image use conditions
- Gravitational Wave Open Science Center, audio files of GW150914
Technical credits
Inter typeface (SIL Open Font License), 3D rendering with three.js and React Three Fiber, animations with Framer Motion and GSAP. The source code is public on GitHub.
Keep exploring
- Glossary →Event horizon, singularity, photon sphere, Page curve, ER = EPR: key terms defined simply.
- Teachers →Ready-to-use activities about black holes: orders of magnitude, time dilation, reading an EHT image.
- Black holes →How black holes form, which types exist, from Gaia BH1 to M87*, and how we photographed and heard them.
- Information paradox →Do black holes destroy information? Hawking's paradox, an interactive Page curve and the 2019 "islands".