By Ron Cowen
Black holes are the ultimate suck-ups. Everything–even light–that comes near the crushing gravity of these ultradense bodies falls in, and nothing gets out.
Scientists now claim that for the first time, they’ve observed energy extracted from a black hole, or more precisely, from the whirl of surrounding space that, according to previous studies, a spinning black hole drags along with it (SN: 11/15/97, p. 308).