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MarkHamillsrightnut t1_iu9r071 wrote

Twelve times the mass of our Sun and located about 1,550 light-years from Earth. Saved you a click.

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superbario-64 t1_iu9shqf wrote

They say something like this pretty much every year.

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PickleTickler37 t1_iu9uafq wrote

Is the grass ok? It just started growing back after last year's incident

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PigSkinPoppa t1_iu9uyff wrote

How do they know that there is a black hole in the cross hairs of this photo? Please educate me and explain the photo. :)

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imsahoamtiskaw t1_iu9zk1r wrote

>Astronomers estimate that 100 million black holes roam among the stars in our Milky Way galaxy, but they have never conclusively identified an isolated black hole.

That's an insane number. Also glad none if them is close to us lol.

Imagine being worried about the SMBH at the center and some other one creeps up towards you (or a 3+ stellar mass one collapses in on itself and forms beside you as a neighbor).

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Aspy343 t1_iuarrls wrote

They call it a monster black hole at 12 solar masses?! The biggest one so far discovered is 66 billion solar masses so calling one with 12 is a bit weird. If anything it's not just small, it's tiny? The exact opposite of a monster. There are much more massive stars?

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TheRealBlerb t1_iuaxg06 wrote

People here saying how were lucky there’s not one too close, but this little guy was here before we discovered it. For all we know Voyager II could have just been lost to a small black holes just a couple of minutes ago.

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astro_osrs t1_iub7bif wrote

Replying to f_d (#322,272)

I think gravitational effects would be noticed, an incoming black hole with, let's just say 12x the mass of the sun, would definitely shift some orbits (marginally), but enough for us to detect them. Since we aren't detecting anything (except for like, planet x, which could be a black hole?) Safe to assume there isn't one "near" but honestly I could be completely wrong lol

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LaunchTransient t1_iubbhwh wrote

Replying to f_d (#322,272)

It would be visible, or rather, its effects would be.
It might not be as noticeable as, say, a comet in the night sky, but an approaching black hole would resemble a moving distortion in the background behind it due to gravitational lensing.

And the moment it moves through anything with signifcant mass (e.g. a gas cloud), it'd show up as that gas gets pulled into an accretion disk and starts emitting light when the gravitational shear forces superheat it.

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f_d t1_iubfdac wrote

Replying to astro_osrs (#328,315)

By the time it was shifting planetary orbits, it would be on top of us compared to anything else in the galaxy. So if it was speeding toward us from an empty area of the sky, while not getting close enough to other stars to give away its presence easily, we might not realize it until very late.

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Redbelly98 t1_iubmg81 wrote

Replying to davew111 (#319,798)

>"In our own backyard" would be Alpha Centauri or Barnards Star kind of distances.

The expression is quite vague with lots of wiggle room. 1550 light-years is still a lot closer than the black hole at the center of the galaxy, which is around 30,000 light-years away.

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Bensemus t1_iubtu1a wrote

Replying to Kwintin01 (#328,860)

That would be quite massive. Our Sun is actually a massive star relative to what’s out there. It’s on the top 10% my mass. The vast majority of stars are tiny.

However compared to how big stars can get even ours is quite small.

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TheLorax66 t1_iubuk09 wrote

Replying to joosth3 (#325,738)

They're represented as a singularity, and for all all intents and purposes it's a good approximation because the event horizon is always larger than the radius, but they do have a diameter. They form when the opposing forces between adjacent electrons and protons is overcome by the gravitational force, but the subatomic particles didn't go anywhere, they're just stacked on top of each other rreeeaaallll tight

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Hydroquake_Vortex t1_iuc4owc wrote

Oh ASTRONOMICAL backyard. I definitely thought there was just a black hole chilling on my patio

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carbonqubit t1_iucnpp3 wrote

Replying to TheLorax66 (#333,012)

This is the basis for electron degeneracy in neutron stars due to the Paul exclusion principle. Black holes on the other hand aren't composed of fermions, as the singularity is more like knotted space or a closed timelike curve. They can be defined as having three foundational characteristics: charge, spin, and mass.

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Aspy343 t1_iucwtyi wrote

Replying to Aspy343 (#325,344)

"Black holes come in many sizes and their size depends on how much material is in them (their mass). Some are the remains of a giant star which collapsed. A star has to be much more massive than our Sun to become a black hole. These types of black holes are only a few miles across."

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Less-Daikon6267 t1_iud3k8k wrote

I call it The Orange Menace Black Hole. Sucks in democracy.

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Azelicus t1_iudi7fb wrote

Replying to Aspy343 (#325,344)

It's just your ordinary clickbait terminology. Few people would click an article titled "very small black hole lies about 375 times farther than our closest neighbor".

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Azelicus t1_iuditlf wrote

Replying to PigSkinPoppa (#319,598)

You don't detect black holes in a single photo.

You either detect them by studying the orbit of a close stellar companion (which seems to orbit a massive, non visibile object) or the effect of the distortion they produce on light passing close to them (an effect called "gravitational lensing").

For those reasons, we can't usually detect small, single black holes, even relatively close to us.

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Gargamel-On-Roids t1_iudo8ei wrote

Is there some sort of law that states in every article or video about black holes, it has to be mentioned that “nothing, not even light, can escape”?

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astro_osrs t1_iug987i wrote

Replying to f_d (#329,823)

It's hard to think that from a far enough distance, it would give us more than a few centuries notice atleast?

I feel like if there was, even a sun mass object, within the oort cloud, we would 1000000% know it. So if a 12x mass black hole was moving towards us, surely we'd be able to detect it. When I say shifting orbits, I'm saying very marginally, not enough of a difference, but enough to be detected to where we know something big is headed toward us.

Jupiter has a very noticeable effect on the sun, and the sun is like, 99.8% of the solar systems mass. Surely a 12x black hole would affect something enough for us to detect. Our planets/sun would surely feel it from very far away, and Im sure we would be able to detect the increasing shift due to the black hole heading towards us

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