Discovered the closest black hole to Earth, only 3 times the mass of the Sun. Recently, astronomers seem to have discovered the closest black hole to Earth called “Unicorn”. This black hole is located 1,500 light years away from us.
This black hole is located in the constellation Monoceros (also meaning Unicorn) and has an extremely small mass, only 3 times our Sun.
The unicorn has a companion, which is a dying red dwarf. Our sun will turn into a red dwarf in about 5 billion years.
Principal researcher Tharindu Jayasinghe, astronomer at Ohio State University and his colleagues analyzed huge amounts of data and discovered a few interesting things: the glare of the red dwarf alters the light intensity for the cycle. This shows that another object is pulling this star and changing shape.
The expanding body may be a black hole, the team believes, but it is only three times the mass of the Sun, based on analyzes of star velocity and light distortion.
There are very few known super light black holes because they are incredibly difficult to detect. Black holes are renowned for their ability to attract everything inside, including light, so astronomers have traditionally discovered them through their effects on their environment.
However, efforts to find ultralight black holes have intensified dramatically in recent years, so we’ll soon have a better understanding of mysterious objects, according to astronomer Thompson.
“We really need to map to see how many small, medium and large black holes there are, because every time we find such a black hole we have more evidence of the hole collapsing. A star.” , said the astronomer.
