General relativity and gravity articles from across Nature Portfolio

The current observations and understanding of black holes is reviewed, and the future of the field of black-hole astrophysics is discussed.

Two signals identified in short gamma-ray bursts from archival Burst and Transient Source Experiment data show kilohertz quasiperiodic oscillations, implying the ringing of a hypermassive neutron star before collapsing to a black hole.

Breaking of Lorentz symmetry is related to the unification of fundamental forces and the extension of the standard model. Here the authors provide updated bounds on the Lorentz violation, by using measurements with trapped Yb+ ion, that represent an improvement over existing results.

Data from the gravitational wave event GW190521 can be explained by a semi-analytical model of two stellar-mass, nonspinning black holes on highly eccentric, hyperbolic orbits that undergo two close encounters before merging into an intermediate-mass black hole.