Located just under 1,600 light-years away, the discovery suggests there might be a sizable population of dormant black holes in binary systems. The black hole Gaia BH1, seen in this artist's concept near its Sun-like companion star, is the closest black hole to Earth discovered so far.
Astronomers have discovered a black hole closer to Earth than any other previously found. It's about ten times as massive as our sun and is located just 1,600 light-years away—rather nearby on a cosmic scale.
It says that, although there are a lot of black holes in the universe, and even in the Milky Way galaxy, the odds of them striking Earth are slim.
A blanet is a member of a hypothetical class of exoplanets that orbit black holes. Blanets are fundamentally similar to planets; they have enough mass to be rounded by their own gravity, but are not massive enough to start thermonuclear fusion, just like planets that orbit stars.
So it would take 25,000 years to get there if you traveled at the speed of light. Actually, that's the amount of time it would take from the perspective of the outside world. From the perspective of a traveler moving at the speed of light, it would appear to take no time at all.
Light-year is the distance light travels in one year. Light zips through interstellar space at 186,000 miles (300,000 kilometers) per second and 5.88 trillion miles (9.46 trillion kilometers) per year.
One hour for a black hole observer would equate to 100,000,000 years for a person on Earth. Therefore one minute in a black hole would be roughly 1,700,000 years.
Stellar black holes are very cold: they have a temperature of nearly absolute zero – which is zero Kelvin, or −273.15 degrees Celsius. Supermassive black holes are even colder. But a black hole's event horizon is incredibly hot. The gas being pulled rapidly into a black hole can reach millions of degrees.
Theorists say it's technically possible, but it would be a weird place to live. Supermassive black holes have a reputation for consuming everything in their path, from gas clouds to entire solar systems.
Despite their abundance, there is no reason to panic: black holes will not devour Earth nor the Universe. It is incredibly unlikely that Earth would ever fall into a black hole. This is because, at a distance, their gravitational pull is no more compelling than a star of the same mass.
In pure general relativity, with no other modifications or considerations of other physics, they remain black for eternity. Once one forms, it will just hang out there, being a black hole, forever.
Eventually, the entire contents of the universe will be crushed together into an impossibly tiny space – a singularity, like a reverse Big Bang. Different scientists give different estimates of when this contraction phase might begin. It could be billions of years away yet.
Is it possible for a black hole to "eat" an entire galaxy? No. There is no way a black hole would eat an entire galaxy. The gravitational reach of supermassive black holes contained in the middle of galaxies is large, but not nearly large enough for eating the whole galaxy.
There is no black hole near our Solar System, so there is no chance of Earth ever getting sucked into a black hole. In fact, the closest black hole to Earth is 1560 light years away from us. It would take us around 30 million years to travel there in a rocket!
Wormholes are shortcuts in spacetime, popular with science fiction authors and movie directors. They've never been seen, but according to Einstein's general theory of relativity, they might exist.
Will the Sun become a black hole? No, it's too small for that! The Sun would need to be about 20 times more massive to end its life as a black hole.
A group of astronomers, including Avi Loeb at Harvard University, suggested Planet Nine may be a tiny black hole somewhere out in the Oort Cloud. If Planet Nine turns out to be Black Hole Nine instead, it's probably about the size of a grapefruit but about 5 to 10 times the mass of Earth.
The fate of anyone falling into a black hole would be a painful “spaghettification,” an idea popularized by Stephen Hawking in his book “A Brief History of Time.” In spaghettification, the intense gravity of the black hole would pull you apart, separating your bones, muscles, sinews and even molecules.
Black holes sound like objects from a science fiction story. These objects are dark, dense regions in the universe, and their gravitational pull is so strong that nothing can escape them—not even light! This is why black holes are so black: without light, we cannot see them.
According to National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the coldest place in the universe is the Boomerang Nebula. NASA reported that “at a cosmologically crisp one degree Kelvin,” the Boomerang Nebula takes the title of the coldest place in the known universe.
Black holes are freezing cold on the inside, but incredibly hot just outside. The internal temperature of a black hole with the mass of our Sun is around one-millionth of a degree above absolute zero.
The dead star at the center of the Red Spider Nebula has a surface temperature of 250,000 degrees F, which is 25 times the temperature of the Sun's surface. This white dwarf may, indeed, be the hottest object in the universe.
No force in the universe can stop this fall, any more than we can stop the flow of time. At the very center of the black hole is where our understanding breaks down. Einstein's theory of gravity seems to predict that time itself is destroyed at the center of the hole: time comes to an abrupt end there.
Time does stop at the event horizon of a black hole, but only as seen by someone outside the black hole. This is because any physical signal will get infinitely redshifted at the event horizon, thus never reaching the outside observer. Someone falling into a black hole, however, would not see time stop.
Maybe black holes go nowhere
By their calculations, quantum mechanics could feasibly turn the event horizon into a giant wall of fire and anything coming into contact would burn in an instant. In that sense, black holes lead nowhere because nothing could ever get inside.