Ah yes, Black Holes, a wonder of space that scientists today have yet to unravel. All we know is that they are a region of spacetime where gravity is so strong that it pulls almost everything, even light leaving a black space in the area that no one can escape from. There’s a lot of theories about them, some say it might just be a gateway to another dimension. But that’s another discussion.
What we’re going to discuss today is that scientists have just discovered another black hole and this might be the closest one ever to Earth. The space wonder was discovered by a team of scientists from The Ohio State University or OSU. According to them, the black hole is the closest ever to Earth, only 1,500 light-years away (clown emoji).
According to a press release by the university, they have named the black hole “The Unicorn” due to its position in the Monoceros constellation but also because it is unique. Why is it unique, you ask? It’s because it’s only three times the mass of the sun and by black hole standards, it is the tiniest black hole ever discovered.
The black hole is so tiny that before this it was deemed impossible for a black hole to be so small. Although the scientists weren’t able to directly image the black hole itself what they found was that a weird phenomenon was taking place near a giant red star. Upon closer inspection, they found that an Invisible object was in orbit with the red star but the object was exerting such a strong gravitational force on the star that it was physically reshaping the star.
According to Todd Thompson, the coauthor of the study, “The simplest explanation is that it’s a black hole. and in this case, the simplest explanation is the most likely one”. I mean what else can exert a gravitational pull so strong as so physically reshape a whole star. The black hole was reportedly distorting the star into a football-like shape.
Thompson further added that “I think the field is pushing toward this, to really map out how many low-mass, how many intermediate-mass, and how many high-mass black holes there are because every time you find one it gives you a clue about which stars collapse, which explode and which are in-between”.
I hope they are able to image The Unicorn, pictures of black holes always come out to be very aesthetic.