We usually name things after their defining characteristics, such as color. There are exceptions, though. One such exception may be the so-called black hole, which Stephen Hawking theorized as not really being black at all. In fact, professors Ulf Leonhardt and Dr Germain Rousseaux used water to test Hawking's theory. Find out the specifics in the full article after the jump.

Have you ever wondered what goes on on the inside of a black hole? Wonder no more, as researchers at the National Science Foundation have an idea of the kind of action that takes place within this cosmic phenomenon. It can probably be summed up in one word: corkscrew. More cosmic fury escalates in the full article after the jump.

In just about every galaxy known to man, the most common feature in them is that they all have a monstrous centerpiece: a massive black hole. For some reason, Milky Way's own Sagittarius A* seems dormant, but Japanese observers say it wasn't always this way. The full story follows after the jump.

Though black holes are often characterized as humongous gravity sinks, scientists believe there's a minimum mass requirement for any black hole in existence. They've got the requirements down pat by way of theoretical prediction only, but two able researchers from NASA finally pinpointed the smallest black hole to date. It could help them judge whether their estimates are accurate enough. More details at the full story.

A star nine times the size of our own Sun has been observed speeding away from our Milky Way at 1.6 million miles per hour. While this may not be an unusual event in and of itself (stranger stuff have happened in the universe - game delays for instance), scientists have been puzzled by the star's origins since it didn't come from our own galaxy. Now they believe that the star came from another galaxy, catapulted away by a black hole 1,000 times the mass of the Sun. Details in the full article.

Can you imagine our Sun as it floats out in space? It's mass is equal to 332,946 Earths. Now imagine the Sun multiplied 18 billion times. That is the mass of the black hole that scientists have recently discovered. The biggest black hole yet. Details in the full article.

NASA's latest stargazing has revealed that 3C321, a system that has two galaxies revolving around each other, is currently being blasted by a nearby black hole. This never-before-seen event could have devastating effects on nearby planets, prompting NASA to take a close look. Check full articles for their findings.

The Earth is constantly bombarded by cosmic rays from our galaxy. However, a type of cosmic ray with ultra-high energies was discovered 95 years ago. Scientists didn't know where these cosmic rays came from because particles outside the galaxy can't travel far enough to hit Earth. Now they believe that the cosmic rays come from energy that escaped from a black hole.

Read more in the full article and find out if the Silver Surfer has anything to do with it.

With no more than three weeks after being claimed the largest black hole in history, the Messier 33 black hole (M33 X-7) and its accompanying star is belittled by a much larger contender. The new black hole is at least 24 times the mass of the Sun (compared with M33 X-7's 16-fold mass) and resides in galaxy IC 10, 1.8 million light years away from Earth.

Discovered by a team led by Andrea Prestwich of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the "stellar-mass" black hole (stellar-mass meaning the black hole comes in sizes of stars) may even have as much as 33 times a typical solar mass. That usually equates to impressive (and powerful) gravitational pull.

Galaxy IC 10 was observed as far as a year ago, and it was found that the black hole took in much of its accompanying star's gases. The material would be lost to this universe, but before it did, the gases heated up and emitted X-rays that were observable from Earth.

"We now know that black holes that form from dying stars can be much larger than we had realized," said Prestwich. She later added that there's a possibility that even more stellar-mass black holes exist in other galaxies which formed during the Milky Way's early days. This new find will be published in an unnamed paper on November 1.

Imagine a star venturing a little too close to a black hole's event horizon and getting caught in an inescapable death trap. What do you see? Most of us would probably think of the star spiraling its hydrogen and helium into the abyss of space, but scientists say that it might be more violent than that.

According to astronomers in the Observatoire de Paris, violent explosions resulting from immense gravitational turbulence could happen when a star is drawn in, making way from some truly astounding stellar fireworks.

While some theorists have argued that the differing pulls in the gravitational field of a black hole may flatten a star's material like a pancake, this may not be entirely true. Some scientists suggest that while the pancake stage may happen, there are definitely a lot of indications that say that explosions will eventually rip the star apart from within.

What results after the gravity tears the pancake apart is a mass of glowing matter falling into the vortex never to escape again. NASA's GALEX spacecraft may have already seen such an event which was originally suspected to be a supernova. What it actually saw might have been an invisible black hole which is feeding on a star and blew it up in the process.

Some experts, however, find these theories and observations inconclusive. Supernova specialist Chris Fryer of the Los Alamos National Observatory says that  simulating deaths of celestial bodies is hard work. The full grasp of how it happens is not at hand at this time, making for a puzzle with plenty of missing pieces.