Blackhole is roughly three times the mass of our sun.
Black holes form when massive stars die and their cores collapse.
Washington: Scientists have discovered what may be the smallest known black hole in the Milky Way galaxy and the closest to our solar system - an object so curious that they nicknamed it the Unicorn.
The researchers said the black hole is roughly three times the mass of our sun, testing the lower limits of size for these extraordinarily dense objects that possess gravitational pulls so strong not even light can escape. A luminous star called a red giant orbits with the black hole in a so-called binary star system named V723 Mon.
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A black hole dubbed the Unicorn may be galaxy s smallest one
Staff Reporter | Apr 22, 2021 03:43 PM EDT
A black hole dubbed the Unicorn may be galaxy s smallest one (Photo : Ohio State illustration/Lauren Fanfer/Handout via REUTERS)
Scientists have discovered what may be the smallest-known black hole in the Milky Way galaxy and the closest to our solar system - an object so curious that they nicknamed it the Unicorn.
The researchers said the black hole is roughly three times the mass of our sun, testing the lower limits of size for these extraordinarily dense objects that possess gravitational pulls so strong not even light can escape. A luminous star called a red giant orbits with the black hole in a so-called binary star system named V723 Mon.
Closest Black Hole to Earth, The Unicorn, Lies 1,500 Light-Years Away
On 4/23/21 at 9:30 AM EDT
Researchers say they have discovered what may be the closest known black hole to Earth, which they have dubbed the Unicorn.
The black hole is about three times the mass of our sun, meaning it is also among the smallest of these celestial objects on record.
According to findings published in the journal
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, the black hole is located around 1,500 light-years away from Earth, within the Milky Way galaxy.
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The black hole is relatively tiny, given that some of these objects are on the order of billions of solar masses. In fact, scientists have only identified a handful of black holes in the universe that are in a similar size range to the Unicorn.
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IMAGE: Exploration of the Universe by the SDSS mission during the past two decades (1998-2019) view more
Credit: eBOSS collaboration
The extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS) collaboration has released its latest scientific results. These results include two studies on dark energy led by Prof. ZHAO Gongbo and Prof. WANG Yuting, respectively, from National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences(NAOC).
The study led by Prof. Zhao was recently published in
Based on eBOSS observations, Prof. ZHAO s team measured the history of cosmic expansion and structure growth in a huge volume of the past universe, corresponding to a distance range between 0.7 and 1.8 billion light years away from us. This volume had never been probed before.