{"id":1732612,"date":"2022-11-09T19:32:48","date_gmt":"2022-11-10T00:32:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1732612"},"modified":"2022-11-09T19:33:29","modified_gmt":"2022-11-10T00:33:29","slug":"scientists-discover-closest-black-hole-to-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/scientists-discover-closest-black-hole-to-earth\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists Discover Closest Black Hole to Earth"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">14<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fscientists-discover-closest-black-hole-to-earth%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1732612&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>A new study has discovered a black hole roughly 1500 light years from Earth, the closest such object on record.<\/p>\n<p>The dormant black hole, known as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/article\/closest-known-black-hole-to-earth\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Gaia BH1<\/a>, is 10 times as massive as the mass of the sun and is orbited by a Sun-like star. BH1 was identified using the European Space Agency\u2019s Gaia spacecraft, and it and its stellar companion can be found in the night sky in the constellation Ophiuchus.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is the nearest known black hole by a factor of three, and its discovery suggests the existence of a sizable population of dormant black holes in binaries,\u201d Dr. Kareem El-Badry, an astrophysicist at the Max Planck Center for Astronomy and the primary author of the <a href=\"https:\/\/academic.oup.com\/mnras\/advance-article-abstract\/doi\/10.1093\/mnras\/stac3140\/6794289?redirectedFrom=fulltext&#038;login=false\">paper<\/a> outlining the discovery, <a href=\"https:\/\/noirlab.edu\/public\/news\/noirlab2227\/?lang\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">said<\/a> in a press release.<\/p>\n<p>Black holes are superdense concentrations of matter that exert a gravitational force so strong that not even light can escape it. Because of that, they are often difficult to spot: Albert Einstein <a href=\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/15421-black-holes-facts-formation-discovery-sdcmp.html\">posited <\/a>their existence as early as 1916, alongside his theory of general relativity, but they remained purely theoretical until astronomers discovered the first observed black hole, Cygnus X-1, in 1964.<\/p>\n<p>Because they emit no light, astronomers rely on a black hole\u2019s gravitational influence on other nearby celestial bodies to observe them. Black holes can consume nearby stars and nebulae \u2014 ripping them apart in a bright and violent spectacle before their mass passes the black hole\u2019s \u2018event horizon\u2019, the point where its gravity becomes so strong that light can no longer escape.<\/p>\n<p>Gaia BH1 is considered \u2018dormant\u2019 because it is not consuming anything at the moment \u2014 its stellar companion seems to be in a stable orbit outside the event horizon.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve been searching for dormant black holes for the last four years using a wide range of datasets and methods,\u201d said El-Badry. \u201cMy previous attempts \u2014 as well as those of others \u2014 turned up a menagerie of binary systems that masquerade as black holes, but this is the first time the search has borne fruit.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Scientists have observed 20 black holes within the Milky Way Galaxy, but, because of how difficult it is for most \u2018dormant\u2019 black holes to be identified, scientists believe the true number is much higher. Astronomers believe there could be 100 million black holes in our galaxy alone.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-462362\" class=\"wp-image-462362\" src=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Star-Illustration-300x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"466\" height=\"466\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Star-Illustration-300x300-1.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Star-Illustration-576x576-1.jpg 576w, https:\/\/dw-wp-production.imgix.net\/2022\/11\/Star-Illustration-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Star-Illustration-768x768-1.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Star-Illustration-1536x1536-1.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Star-Illustration-2048x2048-1.jpg 2048w\" \/><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-462362\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">(Illustration by Tobias Roetsch\/Future Publishing via Getty Images)<\/p>\n<p>Black holes form during the collapse of exceptionally large stars (>8 solar masses). Stars form when accretions of gas are massive enough that the heat and pressure at their cores is high enough to cause nuclear fusion, which transforms lighter elements such as hydrogen and helium into heavier elements, with high mass stars being able to produce every element up to and including iron via such fusion. A star \u2018survives\u2019 so long as the energy and internal pressure produced by its core can counterbalance the pull of its own gravity.<\/p>\n<p>Conventional fusion can only go so far and last for so long, however \u2014 even high mass stars can only fuse elements up to iron. Once a star has exhausted the fuel in it collapses into itself and \u2018dies.\u2019 The outer layers of the star are expelled in a massive explosion called a supernova \u2014 which produces minute amounts of heavy elements like gold, lead and uranium \u2014 and form new stellar nebulae that will coalesce into the next generation of stars. The remnant of the core condenses into a super dense form until a new force counterbalances the force of gravity: a star the size of our Sun would become a \u2018white dwarf\u2019, while more massive stars would collapse into \u2018neutron stars\u2019.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-462368\" class=\"wp-image-462368\" src=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Supernova-300x298.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"509\" height=\"506\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Supernova-300x298-1.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Supernova-579x576-1.jpg 579w, https:\/\/dw-wp-production.imgix.net\/2022\/11\/Supernova-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Supernova-768x764-1.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Supernova-1536x1527-1.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Supernova-2048x2036-1.jpg 2048w\" \/><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-462368\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">(Photo by NASA via Getty Images)<\/p>\n<p>A black hole only forms when the force of gravity is so strong that no other force can counter it.<\/p>\n<p>Another supermassive black hole, Sagittarius A*, sits at the center of our galaxy and is thought to be more than 4 million times as massive as the Sun, and astronomers believe that similar black holes lie at the core of nearly all large galaxies. With the breakthrough discovery of Gaia BH1, it is quite possible that we will find many smaller black holes in our local neighborhood.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A new study has discovered a black hole roughly 1500 light years from Earth, the closest such object on record. The dormant black hole, known as Gaia BH1, is 10 times as massive as the mass of the sun and is orbited by a Sun-like star. BH1 was identified using the European Space Agency\u2019s Gaia &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":856,"featured_media":1732615,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[541],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1732612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-daily-wire"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1732612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/856"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1732612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1732612\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1732615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1732612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1732612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1732612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}