The universe often hides many things from us. Not on purpose, but due to the distance light travels and our current limitations, sometimes the most amazing spatial bodies get hidden from us. So, it’s normal for NASA to find something in space that we thought there was nothing there. Now, astronomers were able to find a stellar-mass black hole that is close to Earth, but it’s far from being a treat. On the other hand, many discoveries are pointing out to these cosmic devourers being close to us by the day – and it would not look good if a black hole swallows the Earth.
The Milky Way is not a safe place: There are millions of black holes around us
Now, the theory of black holes being one of the most undisputed forces in the universe is almost 100% right. Nearly nothing can escape the gravitational pull, not even light, but in some cases, matter is expelled from the disk so fast that the phenomenon can shine like a signal. Scientists have been able to look at a black hole peeling matter multiple times, and every time it looks the same: a quick flash of light that is almost undetectable.
The ones in our galaxy are quieter. According to NASA, there are over 100 million stellar-mass black holes in the Milky Way – and none of them are close enough to Earth to devour the entire solar system, eventually. Meanwhile, this data also shows that, even though our galaxy doesn’t seem to end for us, there are millions of light-years of length. However, a new one was detected orbiting a star, in a space in which researchers thought it was empty. In reality, it is filled with energy and cosmic bodies.
A new black hole found near Earth: It’s massive and eats stars
Astronomers found a massive black hole, called Gaia BH3, sitting surprisingly close to Earth. It’s the third one of its kind, and all three were spotted by the European Space Agency’s Gaia telescope, which has been tracking the movement of billions of stars in our galaxy since 2013.
To be sure about what they were seeing, the Gaia team compared the space data with observations from ground telescopes. One of them was ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile, which helped measure the black hole’s mass by looking at its partner star. Black holes this heavy have been seen outside our galaxy before, and scientists suspected they came from stars with very few heavy elements — stars made almost entirely of hydrogen and helium.
Gaia helped prove a theory: More to come in the future?
The “metal-poor” stars don’t lose much mass as they age, so when they collapse, they can create unusually large black holes. Until now, though, there wasn’t solid proof linking the two. That’s where Gaia BH3 comes in. Its companion star turned out to be extremely metal-poor, which strongly suggests the black hole itself formed from a similar star – and sometimes they feed from planets.
It’s the kind of direct evidence astronomers had been looking for. Because of how rare this discovery is, the researchers decided to publish their results early, even before Gaia’s next big data release in 2025. That way, scientists everywhere can start studying this black hole right away.
Astronomers can’t see them: Just what they do to space
Black holes have been around for billions of years, and some theories have these cosmic destroyers as one of the reasons why the big expansion happened. While NASA and other space agencies are still studying the power of the black holes, new technology should be developed in parallel because we can’t directly see them – just the spacetime bending around them and the disk.