Astronomers find closest black hole to Earth, hints of more

Meet your new but shy galactic neighbor: A black hole left over from death of a fleeting young star.

European astromers have found closest black hole to Earth yet, so near that two stars dancing with it can be seen by naked eye.

Of course, close is relative on galactic scale. This black hole is about 1,000 light-years away and each light-year is 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion kilometers). But in terms of cosmos and even galaxy, it is in our neighborhood, said European Sourn Observatory astromer Thomas Rivinius, who led study published Wednesday in journal Astromy & Astrophysics.

previous closest black hole is probably about three times furr, about 3,200 light-years, he said.

discovery of a closer black hole, which is in constellation Telescopium in Sourn Hemisphere, hints that re are more of se out re. Astromers orize re are between 100 million to 1 billion of se small but dense objects in Milky Way.

trouble is we can’t see m. thing, t even light, escapes a black hole’s gravity. Usually, scientists can only spot m when y’re gobbling up sections of a partner star or something else falling into m. Astromers think most black holes, including this newly discovered one, don’t have anything close eugh to swallow. So y go undetected.

Astromers found this one because of unusual orbit of a star. new black hole is part of what used to be a three-star dance in a system called HR6819. two remaining super-hot stars aren’t close eugh to be sucked in, but inner star’s orbit is warped.

Using a telescope in Chile , y confirmed that re was something about four or five times mass of our sun pulling on inner star. It could only be a black hole, y concluded.

Outside astromers said that makes sense.

“It will motivate ditional searches among bright, relatively nearby stars,” said Ohio State University astromer Todd Thompson, who wasn’t part of research.

Like most of se of black holes this one is tiny, maybe 25 miles (40 kilometers) in diameter.

“Washington, D.C. would quite easily fit into black hole, and once it went in it, would never come back,” said astromer Dietrich Bae, a study co-author.

se are young hot stars compared to our 4.6 billion-year-old sun. y’re maybe 140 million years old, but at 26,000 degrees F (15,000 degrees C) y are three times hotter than sun, Rivinius said. About 15 million years ago, one of those stars got too big and too hot and went superva, turning into black hole in a violent process, he said.

“It is most likely that re are black holes much closer than this one,” said Avi Loeb, director of Harvard’s Black Hole Initiative, who wasn’t part of study. “If you find an ant while scanning a tiny fraction of your kitchen, you kw re must be many more out re.”