Most massive stellar black hole in the Milky Way discovered 'extremely close' to Earth (2024)

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Most massive stellar black hole in the Milky Way discovered 'extremely close' to Earth? ›

European scientists say they have discovered the biggest stellar black hole yet in the Milky Way, less than 2,000 light-years from Earth. The dormant black hole known as Gaia BH3 has a mass 33 times that of the Sun.

"Sgr A* lies in the heart of our own Milky Way galaxy, making it the nearest supermassive black hole and a prime candidate to study such flares," Levis said.

The most massive black hole observed, TON 618, tips the scales at 66 billion times the Sun's mass.

The closest black hole to Earth is Gaia-BH1 (also discovered by Gaia), which is 1,560 light-years away. Gaia-BH1 has a mass around 9.6 times that of the sun, making it considerably smaller than this newly discovered black hole.

The nearest known black hole is Gaia BH1, which was discovered in September 2022 by a team led by Kareem El-Badry.

In short, no. There's no way that a black hole could eat the universe, or even an entire galaxy, according to NASA. Here's why. Black holes are former massive stars that have collapsed back in on themselves to become incomprehensibly dense — so much so that even light can't escape them.

Black holes have two parts. There is the event horizon, which you can think of as the surface, though it's simply the point where the gravity gets too strong for anything to escape. And then, at the center, is the singularity. That's the word we use to describe a point that is infinitely small and infinitely dense.

The new discovery is a landmark, representing the first time that a big black hole with such an origin has been found close to Earth. The stellar-mass black hole, designated Gaia-BH3, is 33 times more massive than our sun.

Observations of a black hole called H1743-322, which harbors five to 10 times the mass of the sun and is located about 28,000 light-years from Earth, revealed it apparently pulled matter off a companion star, then spat some of it back out as gigantic "bullets" of gas moving at nearly a quarter the speed of light.

Supermassive black holes exist in the centers of most large galaxies. One example is Sagittarius A* (Sgr A* for short, which is pronounced “Saj A-star”) at the center of our Milky Way.

Where do black holes take you? ›

When matter falls into or comes closer than the event horizon of a black hole, it becomes isolated from the rest of space-time. It can never leave that region. For all practical purposes the matter has disappeared from the universe.

This makes them about 10 times closer than the previous candidate for closest black hole to Earth – the black hole Gaia BH1, which is about 1,500 light-years away. Even at this distance, the black holes present no immediate threat to us on Earth.

If a black hole somehow came extremely close to Earth (closer than the moon's orbit, for example) and was traveling slowly enough then our planet would likely be ripped apart by the extreme gravitational forces of the object.

Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy, is far less luminous than other black holes at the centers of galaxies we can observe, which means our galaxy's central black hole has not been actively gobbling up material around it.

Black holes can move through the universe at 17,500 miles per second, scientists have calculated. That's one-tenth the speed of light, according to a study published in Physical Review Letters.

Despite their abundance, there is no reason to panic: black holes will not devour Earth nor the Universe. It is incredibly unlikely Earth would fall into a black hole because, at a distance, their gravitational pull is no more compelling than a star of the same mass.

🤯 TON 618 is an Ultramassive black hole with a mass of about 66 billion solar masses. Phoenix A is an Ultramassive black hole with a mass of about 100 billion solar masses, making it the largest black hole ever discovered.

Ultramassive black holes are between tens of billions of solar masses. The heaviest black hole known in the universe is the aptly named TON 618, estimated to be 66 billion times the mass of our sun. While only half that mass, the newly discovered ultramassive black hole in the centre of Abell 1201 is still a monster.

In the case of Ton 618, the enormous Lyman-alpha nebula surrounding it has the diameter of at least 100 kiloparsecs (320,000 light-years), twice the size of the Milky Way.