According to a new study, the nearest black hole has been found at just 1,560 light-years away from Earth. Gaia BH1, also known as the black hole, orbits a sun-like star and is approximately 10 times larger than the sun.
Black holes have been known to steal and eat gas from huge companion stars. This gas forms a circle around the black hole, and it glows brightly when viewed with X-rays. These hungry black holes may not be the most common in our galaxy. The tranquil black holes, which are not in mid-meal, are far more common than the ones that astronomers have long hoped to discover. Previous claimsSuch black holes are possible to find They have so far not held their own (SN: 5/6/20; SN: 3/11/22).
Kareem and her colleagues, astrophysicist Karem El-Badry, turned to data released by the Gaia spacecraft. These data accurately map the positions of Millions of stars (SN: 6/13/22). A star orbiting a black hole at a safe distance won’t get eaten, but it will be pulled back and forth by the black hole’s gravity. Astronomers can detect the star’s motion and deduce the black hole’s presence.
One star out of the hundreds of thousands that appeared to have been pulled by an unknown object seemed like it was a good candidate for a black hole. Follow-up observations using other telescopes Support the black hole conceptThe team reports November 2nd Monthly Notices of Royal Astronomical Society.
Gaia BH1 is the nearest black hole to Earth ever discovered — the next closest is around 3,200 light-years away. But it’s probably not the closest that exists, or even the closest we’ll ever find. Astronomers believe there are approximately 100 million black holes within the Milky Way. However, almost all of them remain invisible. “They’re just isolated, so we can’t see them,” says El-Badry, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass.
Gaia’s next data release is scheduled for 2025. El-Badry anticipates that it will bring more bounty from black holes. “We think there are probably a lot that are closer,” he says. “Just finding one … suggests there are a bunch more to be found.”
