Should We Be Worried About the New Closest Black Hole To Earth?
The NEW Nearest Black Hole to Earth is Much Closer Than You Think!
Black holes are often thought of as massive, distant, and monstrous objects in space. They are the remnants of massive dying stars whose gravity got the best of them, squeezing all of the material from the star into an infinitely dense, infinitesimally small point, leaving nothing behind. These dark remnants have a gravitational pull so strong that if you get close enough, even light will bend to its will and not be able to escape. They turn the universe into a strange place, where the meaning of space and time change so much that they are practically beyond understanding. But black holes don’t need to be supermassive, nor do they need to be that far away. And researchers at Ohio State University have just discovered a black hole, hiding around the orbit of its much larger and more luminous red giant star companion. And this black hole is only 1500 light-years away from Earth, which makes it basically down the street from us in stellar distances and about half the distance of the previous closest black hole we had seen.
Dubbed ‘The Unicorn’ by its discoverers, the potential black hole is in the constellation of Monoceros, Greek for the Unicorn is special indeed. It is in one of the smallest categories of naturally formed black holes that we have observed the effects of, with only about three solar masses. Compared to the central black hole in our galaxy, this black hole is more than a million times smaller.
Black holes are astronomically difficult to identify. Since they produce no light of their own and absorb all the light that enters its event horizon, it’s almost impossible to identify a black hole by itself. Most of the time, we know a black hole exists because of how it interacts with the matter surrounding it. Maybe it heats up the surrounding gas as it feeds on it and it shoots that out, or it tugs on bright nearby stellar objects, but it’s almost always by chance that we find a black hole.
The small mass of this black hole makes it even more uniquely challenging to find. Being so small in mass and size means that it can only gravitationally interact with objects very close to it. In fact, NASA and astronomers have been studying The Unicorn’s companion red giant star for many years now, showing up in the All-Sky Automated Survey and NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, without discovering the black hole around the star.
Scientists were only able to discover the black hole, which is still considered a candidate until further observation and data can give us a clearer picture, because of how the black hole candidate’s gravity was tugging on its red giant companion, elongating one of its axes and giving away the fact that something dark and massive was surrounding the dying star. The simplest explanation the scientists found, and by extension, the most plausible is that the object is a black hole with about three times the mass of our own sun.
Black holes are enigmatic and we are still mapping out exactly what it takes to make a black hole. With our current understanding, technology, and instruments, we are only able to detect large and active black holes, missing out on the much smaller but also mysterious black holes hiding right under our noses. But recent advancements and new instruments slowly being deployed and activated to study the night sky are giving us a fresh new look at what’s out there, and letting us find exciting new stellar bodies to talk about, study, and understand. Every black hole discovered that doesn’t conform to our current understanding, or is an unexpected find, teaches us a little more about star formation and collapse, and gives us a little more appreciation of the larger universe around us.
How would you feel if we found a black hole even closer than this one?
Put your thoughts in the comments section below. Remember to like this video and subscribe to the channel for more content about space.
#astronomy #science #space #universe #blackhole #galaxycluster
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[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.02212
[2] https://www.space.com/tiny-black-hole-unicorn-closest-to-earth
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Видео Should We Be Worried About the New Closest Black Hole To Earth? канала IdeaVerse
Black holes are often thought of as massive, distant, and monstrous objects in space. They are the remnants of massive dying stars whose gravity got the best of them, squeezing all of the material from the star into an infinitely dense, infinitesimally small point, leaving nothing behind. These dark remnants have a gravitational pull so strong that if you get close enough, even light will bend to its will and not be able to escape. They turn the universe into a strange place, where the meaning of space and time change so much that they are practically beyond understanding. But black holes don’t need to be supermassive, nor do they need to be that far away. And researchers at Ohio State University have just discovered a black hole, hiding around the orbit of its much larger and more luminous red giant star companion. And this black hole is only 1500 light-years away from Earth, which makes it basically down the street from us in stellar distances and about half the distance of the previous closest black hole we had seen.
Dubbed ‘The Unicorn’ by its discoverers, the potential black hole is in the constellation of Monoceros, Greek for the Unicorn is special indeed. It is in one of the smallest categories of naturally formed black holes that we have observed the effects of, with only about three solar masses. Compared to the central black hole in our galaxy, this black hole is more than a million times smaller.
Black holes are astronomically difficult to identify. Since they produce no light of their own and absorb all the light that enters its event horizon, it’s almost impossible to identify a black hole by itself. Most of the time, we know a black hole exists because of how it interacts with the matter surrounding it. Maybe it heats up the surrounding gas as it feeds on it and it shoots that out, or it tugs on bright nearby stellar objects, but it’s almost always by chance that we find a black hole.
The small mass of this black hole makes it even more uniquely challenging to find. Being so small in mass and size means that it can only gravitationally interact with objects very close to it. In fact, NASA and astronomers have been studying The Unicorn’s companion red giant star for many years now, showing up in the All-Sky Automated Survey and NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, without discovering the black hole around the star.
Scientists were only able to discover the black hole, which is still considered a candidate until further observation and data can give us a clearer picture, because of how the black hole candidate’s gravity was tugging on its red giant companion, elongating one of its axes and giving away the fact that something dark and massive was surrounding the dying star. The simplest explanation the scientists found, and by extension, the most plausible is that the object is a black hole with about three times the mass of our own sun.
Black holes are enigmatic and we are still mapping out exactly what it takes to make a black hole. With our current understanding, technology, and instruments, we are only able to detect large and active black holes, missing out on the much smaller but also mysterious black holes hiding right under our noses. But recent advancements and new instruments slowly being deployed and activated to study the night sky are giving us a fresh new look at what’s out there, and letting us find exciting new stellar bodies to talk about, study, and understand. Every black hole discovered that doesn’t conform to our current understanding, or is an unexpected find, teaches us a little more about star formation and collapse, and gives us a little more appreciation of the larger universe around us.
How would you feel if we found a black hole even closer than this one?
Put your thoughts in the comments section below. Remember to like this video and subscribe to the channel for more content about space.
#astronomy #science #space #universe #blackhole #galaxycluster
📄📄📄📄📄📄📄📄📄📄📄📄📄📄📄📄📄
[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.02212
[2] https://www.space.com/tiny-black-hole-unicorn-closest-to-earth
📄📄📄📄📄📄📄📄📄📄📄📄📄📄📄📄📄
🎵🎵🎵🎵🎵🎵🎵🎵🎵🎵🎵🎵
🎵🎵🎵🎵🎵🎵🎵🎵🎵🎵🎵🎵
Видео Should We Be Worried About the New Closest Black Hole To Earth? канала IdeaVerse
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