A Small Inactive Black Hole Has Been Discovered

While space exploration continues at full speed, scientists announced a new discovery today. The international team of experts shared that they have discovered a small, inactive black hole in the Large Magellanic Cloud, the neighboring galaxy of our own galaxy, the Milky Way.

The scientists, who likened the discovery to “finding a needle in a haystack”, made their discoveries in the observations made by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope 6 years ago. Moreover, the team that made the discovery was a team that is mostly famous for disproving different black hole discoveries.

The location of the black hole shows why the discovery is called ‘finding a needle in a haystack’:

Although scientists continue to work on inactive black holes, they have not found any concrete evidence to date. These black holes generally do not emit high levels of X-ray radiation. For this reason, these black holes are considered to be ‘asleep’. Discovery of inactive black holes is also very difficult because they are inactive. Because these black holes do not affect their surroundings as much as other black holes.

While the newly discovered black hole doesn’t sound scary as it’s inactive, it still has at least nine times the mass of our Sun. In addition, the black hole orbits a hot, blue star, also 25 times the mass of our Sun.

The animation of the black hole and the star it orbits was created as follows: