Science & Technology

Closest known black hole to Earth discovered after years-long hunt

Julia Musto
Fox News
Fri, 04 Nov 2022 16:56 UTC

The dormant black hole is named Gaia BH1 and is located about 1,600 light-years away

Astronomers have reportedly discovered the closest-known black hole to Earth.

BH1 was located about 1,600 light-years away in the constellation Ophiuchus, making it three times nearer to Earth than the previous record holder.

The dormant black hole is about 10 times more massive than the sun, according to astronomers using the International Gemini Observatory. The observatory is operated by the National Science Foundation's NOIRLab.

In a release, NOIRLab said this marked the first unambiguous detection of a dormant stellar-mass black hole in the Milky Way.

There are an estimated 100 million stellar-mass black holes in the Milky Way alone, with nearly all of them active.

Using the Gemini North telescope in Hawaii, the researchers discovered Gaia BH1 by making observations of the motion of the black hole's companion: a sun-like star that orbits the black hole at about the same distance as the Earth orbits the sun.

The few stellar-mass black holes in the galaxy have been detected using their energetic interactions with a companion star.

While material from a star becomes superheated and generates X-rays and jets spiraling toward a black hole, if the black hole is dormant it blends in with its surroundings.

Two teams of astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope and ground-based telescopes in Australia and Chile discovered the first examples of isolated stellar-mass black holes in Jan. 2000. (Photo by)

Astronomers are not clear on just how the star and black hole came to be in their current positions.

The release said the progenitor star that turned into the black hole would have been at least 20 times as massive as the sun and only lived a few million years.

In addition, if both stars formed simultaneously, the massive star would have turned into a supergiant.

Modeling suggests such an event would have likely destroyed the companion or ended up on a much tighter orbit if it survived.

Julia Musto is a reporter for Fox News and Fox Business Digital.

Reader Comments

life · 2022-11-07T17:39:04Z

NOIRLab said...

noir ?

il manque le "e" !

évidemment ce n'est pas le trou noire de Julia ? 🤦‍♂️

😁

JTF Truth · 2022-11-07T17:46:24Z

life noir

- Of or relating to the film noir genre.

- Of or relating to a genre of crime literature featuring tough, cynical characters and bleak settings.

- Suggestive of danger or violence.

Interesting name for a lab.

life · 2022-11-07T22:03:21Z

JTF Truth those too are great synonyms !

was making light of the word "black", in french is "noir" (masculine) or "noire" (feminine) ... given that the author is a woman and the name of the lab is noirlab i wondered if someone misplaced the "e" or evidently it was not named after the author's black hole...tongue in cheek humour you might say.

: )

JTF Truth · 2022-11-08T03:03:02Z

life Black Lab, the lab or the dog.

life ·

JTF Truth

· 2022-11-08T03:37:15Z

Winternights3 · 2022-11-07T18:20:25Z

A dormant 🕳 🤣

What a contradiction in terms, if these postulated events were real, the entirety of space would no longer be.

Seems Strange that HERE on Earth 🌍 Sink HOLES appear and academia is hard pushed to come up with a feasible explanation for the true nature of there construction, yet 1,600 LY from Earth 🌍 They can be so up beat and positive and suggest with authority that 🕳 are indeed real .

Baybars · 2022-11-07T19:35:23Z

Winternights3 Your observations make my day! Thank you for that.

codis · 2022-11-08T09:57:09Z

Winternights3

Seems Strange that HERE on Earth 🌍 Sink HOLES appear and academia is hard pushed to come up with a feasible explanation for the true nature of there construction, ...

A micro black hole, of course...

But honestly everybody, look at the end of the article. :

Julia Musto is a reporter for Fox News and Fox Business Digital.

A journalist. What do you expect ?!?!?

HashAttack2 · 2022-11-12T18:57:27Z

Winternights3 Next you will be questioning whether scientist really can divine the creation of the universe from a single meteor, or whether archeologists really can divine the sex habits of the local fauna from a single 10,000-year-old human fingernail

HashAttack2 · 2022-11-12T20:00:00Z

codis Micro black holes, aka Strangelets ... CERN cannot exclude the possibility of these being created

CONCERN ABOUT CERN: THE STRANGELETS RUMOR REMERGES - [Link]

The dangers of CERN's monster machine creating Strangelets were vanishingly small. Not zero, but still, vanishly small. But adding fuel to the quiet controversy was the fact that these suits were thrown out of court. Why? Well, for one thing, the courts had no jurisdiction over CERN, for CERN is a quasi-sovereign entity, a kind of "cosmology cartel." And that meant, in turn, that the plaintiffs had no standing.

No-one / no country has any legal standing to challenge CERN on anything

Winternights3 · 2022-11-12T21:11:53Z

HashAttack2 I'll question that's which needs to be questioned, not the idiotic nonsense you've just posted.

codis · 2022-11-13T08:38:29Z

HashAttack2 Don't tell me you don't trust the announcements of the CERN ~~magicians~~ scientists ?!?

* clarification: in my terminology, "magician" = "illusionist"

Saiko · 2022-11-07T19:13:08Z

I'd like to know what a "dormant black hole" is. Dormant means sleeping, i.e. inactive. How does a black hole inactivate? Do they have an on/off switch somewhere?

They are supposed to be black holes (and not something else, like a star) because of mass and size. If you compact some mass enough it becomes a black hole. How do you make a black hole "dormant"?

Baybars · 2022-11-07T19:37:34Z

Saiko You make a black hole dormant by looking at it. When nobody is looking it is singing and dancing but just as soon as you turn your eyes in it's direction; it plays dead. [Link]

sbc · 2022-11-08T01:05:13Z

Saiko it's not actively consuming matter supposedly...... like nothing is in it's event horizon. there's no hawking radiation or anything.

it has reached an equilibrium with it's surroundings.

i am pretty sure that is what they are implying by "dormant".

life · 2022-11-08T02:43:02Z

Saiko by dormant, as sbc said, it isn't absorbing matter, in the cosmic sense of things, as a self serving being would do, not to give but to absorb from others, be it human scale or galactic scale.

contrast this with a star emitting light/energy, also in the cosmic sense, serving or giving from themselves to others.

(paraphrased from the Ra material)

whether this article is true or not, it matters little, because the principle of absorbing vs. giving is what, imho, can be read between the lines.

cheers

scrutinizer · 2022-11-07T21:50:09Z

Astrophysics is fun, you can just make stuff up as you go, to explain the first stuff you made up.

Alright I can't resist, "Closest black hole to earth discovered: physicists named it Utah."

katesisco · 2022-11-08T12:40:50Z

Are we any closer to identifying the mystifying BHs are what they really are: Magnetars

Magnetars are the most magnetic accumulation in the Universe. They are proposed to 'shed' magnetism and degrade into ? What if they actually achieve an internal magnetic balance that allows preservation of the magnetic body? That would equal the balance now being sought by the experimenters of nuclear containment. Having achieved 'balance' they would not shed magnetism. No energy being shed, no indication of a body being present. The mysterious BH.

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Closest known black hole to Earth discovered after years-long hunt

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