Earth’s new neighbor, 1,600 light-years away

Astronomers have discovered the closest-known black hole to Earth, per a new peer-reviewed study published last week. Called Gaia BH1, it’s a comparatively small specimen – about 10x more massive than the Sun😳 – that’s around 1,600 light-years away.

🌌 Background: A black hole is a place in space where gravity is so intense that even light, the fastest known entity in our universe, can’t escape. Scientists believe virtually all large galaxies, including the Milky Way, have a supermassive black hole – millions, or even billions, times more massive than the Sun😳😳 – at their centers.

Then, there are stellar-mass black holes.

• These weigh 5x–100x the mass of the Sun, and are much more common than supermassive black holes.
• Astronomers estimate the Milky Way alone contains 100 million stellar-mass black holes, though only ~20 have been confirmed to date.

🔭 Back to Gaia BH1… The newly-discovered stellar-mass black hole is about 3x as close to Earth as the previous record holder. And unlike all other known black holes, which pull in matter from nearby stars that orbit them, Gaia BH1 and its companion star are quietly orbiting in space at about the same distance from each other as the Earth and Sun – like a lion and its prey, quietly stuck in the pre-chase stage.

+Dive deeper: Learn more about black holes here.