Scientists have discovered a massive black hole heading directly to Earth, but they are not worried, although this hole is capable of swallowing our galaxy, the Milky Way, and perhaps dozens of neighboring galaxies.
Black holes form when one or more stars “die,” creating a gravitational field so great that nothing, not even light, can escape.
The black hole PBC J2333.9-2343 is located about 657 million light-years from Earth, which means that it will not reach us anytime soon.
By comparison, this black hole spans an area about 40 times larger than the Milky Way, which in turn spans a million light-years.
This makes this one of the largest black holes discovered so far, according to the Royal Astronomical Society, and until recently scientists thought that this hole was a galaxy, before they had doubts about its “behavior”, says the newspaper. Washington Examiner.
The newspaper quoted Lorena Garcia, the lead author of the study that reclassified the black hole into a “radio galaxy” and a researcher at the Millennium Institute for Astrophysics, as saying, “We began to study this galaxy because it showed strange properties,” adding, “Our hypothesis was that the relativistic jet (the center) Its supermassive black hole has changed its direction, and to confirm this idea, we had to make a lot of observations.”
The unique properties also revealed the aging of the galaxy.
“The fact that we see the core not feeding into the lobes anymore means that they are very old. They are the remnants of past activity, while the structures near the core represent younger, active jets.”
Although the sheer size of a black hole is frightening, it is very far away.
To understand the distance this black hole is from Earth, a rocket traveling at 18,000 miles per hour would need 37,000 years to travel a distance of one light year.
This black hole is 657 million light-years away from us.
