Space.com reported on discoveries about the behavior of light around the edge of the giant black hole Cygnus X1. The light should be formed as polarized by a very strong electro-magnetic field probably created by the 18 mile wide black hole.
http://www.space.com/11222-black-holes-cygnus-warped-space.html
The behavior of matter and light near a black hole is interesting for numerous reasons including what can be learned about fundamental forces of nature such as electro-magnetism, ‘massless’ photons, the properities if any of space and behavior of quarks and other sub-atomic particles near the presence of a very powerful gravitational field. Gravity is the most weak of the three major forces of nature in the standard model of physics (the other two are electro-magnetism or electroweak force and the strong nuclear force) so it is especially interesting when concentrated in places such as a black hole.
The power of gravity I suppose being one-directional with all that mass it just keeps crunching everything inward. That doesn’t actually make a lot of sense, since space hasn’t got any directions to it, so gravity perhaps locks of mass in such a way that it can’t have a reverse at a certain point.
Garrison Gibson: books and blog 