The Gaia spacecraft is currently measuring the positions and distances to more than 1 billion astronomical objects in our galaxy. The new observations suggests black hole systems hosting seemingly ordinary stars are likely much more common than originally thought. If confirmed, this black hole would be the closest known black hole to Earth. This strange system, called Gaia BH1, consists of a Sun-like star orbiting a tiny, massive object, which El-Badry and his colleagues say is black hole. Now, Kareem El-Badry at the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge and others say they have discovered the first example of such a covert black hole within data gathered by the Gaia spacecraft. And if these furtive black holes are out there, then the latest generation of orbiting observatories might be able to spot them. That swirling accretion disk of stripped material is why black holes are bright sources of X-rays - and it’ how astronomers usually spot black holes in the first place.īut astronomers have long thought there could be a more insidious population of black hole binary systems that do not glow brightly, and so remain hidden. Instead, black holes tended to be tightly bound to their companion stars, stripping them of their matter, which then glows brightly as it accelerates toward its gravitational fate. Indeed, of all the black holes astronomers have previously found, none were known to threaten a Sun-like star. Admittedly, the notion that our relatively normal star could fall into such a trap sounds like the plot from a science fiction movie. Imagine if our Sun was orbiting a black hole, perhaps spiraling into it.
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