Astronomers find closest black hole to Earth yet to be discovered – 9News
A new black hole has been discovered and it’s the closest to Earth scientists have ever found.
The black hole is just a thousand light years away, which as Swinburne University astronomer Alan Duffy explained, is incredibly close in astronomy terms.
The black hole is four times the mass of the sun crammed in a tiny region, barely a few dozen kilometres across.
“Basically if this thing were sitting centred at the Sydney Opera House then it will stretch out as far as the airport. Something so small means it has enormous gravity. So strong meaning light can’t escape making it invisible or black,” Prof Duffy told Today.
The black hole is close enough to be seen by the naked eye making scientists question how they missed it.
“This source is actually close enough to see with the naked eye. That’s what really stunned me about this discovery. It means we had this monster hiding in plain sight for years. For some reason we didn’t detect it earlier,” Prof Duffy said.
“For us to have a found a black hole so close to us means there must be hundreds of millions of these black holes in our galaxy. Indeed there must be one or two that are even closer.
The new discovery will provide a unique opportunity for astronomers and scientists to learn more about fundamental principles of gravity.
What these allow us to do is have the perfect ultimate test of Einstein’s theories. For us this is the best experiment you could ever get,” said Prof Duffy.
“It’s a really quite extraordinary time.”
Despite being so close to earth, the black hole is not a threat to Earth or our solar system in any way.
