By Lucas Regal
Last week scientists at Nasa discovered the closest black hole to Earth ever seen. This Black hole, named Gaia BH1, is 1,600 light-years away. This is three times closer than the previously closest known black hole.
What does this mean? Scientists say that this “suggests the existence of a sizable population of dormant black holes in binaries.” They also say that there are potentially hundreds of millions of black holes in our galaxy, however only a handful have been discovered.
This can sound very scary, especially considering that black holes are described according to NASA as “a gravitational field so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape.” Don’t worry though, as NASA scientists say that “Black holes do not go around in space eating stars, moons and planets. Earth will not fall into a black hole because no black hole is close enough to the solar system for Earth to do that”. Phew. I was sweating over here.
The biggest takeaway from this discovery is that we are continuing our advancement in understanding outer space. Every discovery like this one is progress in putting together the infinite pieces in the puzzle of the Universe.
